English titles: Eyes Without a Face; The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.
Based on the novel by Jean Redon (1st edition 1959, apparently)
Second viewing; the previous one was on December 11, 2005.
Spoilers below.
A surgeon whose daughter was horribly burned in an accident kidnaps (with the assistance of a former patient) young women in order to use their skins to rebuild his daughter's face.
Eyes Without a Face is about a man's allegiance to his daughter whom he has accidentally harmed, and a woman's allegiance to the doctor who restored her face; from another angle, this is a film about the dichotomy means/end, and I may be stating the obvious here, but it's important to stress that only superficially it's about a mad doctor and his creepy assistant and a horribly deformed woman. This is actually about how we humans through our actions -- and mostly through our omissions -- cause pain and death to other living beings with the excuse of bringing well-being to those to whom we are bound (by force or by choice) in allegiance. It's fascinating to see how most people need to remain unconscious of this reality in order to stay sane. The formal perfection of Eyes Without a Face has only a tiny stain which may very well be a product of my misplaced expectations (but there was another viewer with a similar opinion; see the IMDB's message board): when Edna rushes upstairs I could swear that she was going to find Christiane and see her (Edna's) own face on Christiane; when she screams, I thought that's what happened but then we find out that she has jumped out the window and no evidence is given that she found Christiane, and furthermore the timing of the sequence just does not seem to allow that to have happened. See also my upcoming review for Le sang des bêtes (1949).
Rating: 76 (unchanged) (13th position in 1960's best)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment