To Be Fixed Is to Be Loved? Eyes Without a Face Movie Review

Many of you know “eyes without a face” from Billy Idol, but he got it from the 1960 French horror film by Georges Franju, which is a lot stranger than the song.

Dr. Genessier is a famous surgeon from Paris with a slight issue: he crashed his car and mutilated his daughter's face. She is forced to hide away in their country home with a smooth white mask - eerily reminiscent of slipknot’s masks. Her father’s plan to fix the situation is to take other young women's faces and try them on his daughters. Not exactly father of the year.

The distributor of the film renamed it The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus when it reached America, and paired it with The Manster, a movie about a man growing a second head (and remembered for being the “bad” horror movie). Critics originally put off the film for being standard exploitation theater rather than the seminal art piece it is seen as today.

Eyes Without A Face is famous for one scene, the surgery, and it deserved to be recognized. Franju started out making documentaries. Specifically, he made one inside Paris slaughterhouses, and he filmed the surgery in a similar way: brutally slow and silent while being in full view. Fun fact! Some audience members reportedly fainted at its screening in Edinburgh. While it is not excessively gory, it is still hard to watch today.

So why watch this horror movie from the 1960s? Christiane can’t use her face, so Edith Scob plays her with just her eyes and movement. The acting is extremely well done in this film, through small movements and actions you get a sense of who is the most human in the film, surprise, it's not her father. He calls what he is doing love, but he never looks at his daughter, only at what is wrong with her. The idea that someone has to be “fixed” to be loved is relevant today, and it is not going to go anywhere.

The film is also stunning. The last shot is one of the loveliest in horror. Please go watch this film. It is an hour and a half and worth it.

Billy Idol only gave you the title. Go watch the rest.