Scientist kidnaps women for surgical face-swap with his daughter
Eyes Without A Face has the otherworldliness and classic simplicity of a fairy tale, but it’s the kind of traumatic before-bed story you might get from a drunken uncle who’s not used to being around kids: a young woman, her face disfigured by a horrible car accident, wanders through her father’s mansion wearing a creepy, expressionless mask. Conveniently, her father is also a mad scientist, and he kidnaps a succession of other young beauties in the hopes of surgically transplanting one of their faces onto hers. That sounds like just another Z-grade 50s drive-in flick, but it’s elevated by director Georges Franju’s somber handling of the material – the father is not a cackling maniac, but a man haunted by his horrific deeds, remarking, “I’ve done so much wrong to perform this miracle.” Franju masterfully uses close-ups and tracking shots to heighten the beauty and tragedy of this unsettling film.
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