Eyes Without a Face

 *****

A physician and highly skilled surgeon will do whatever it takes to “return a lovely face” back to his tormented daughter, her own face mangled after pops wrecked a car carrying them. Mother died in this wreck while the daughter endures endless suffering as a result of its damage to her face. A frightening visage that leaves her concealed within the home of the surgeon, to successfully allow pops to use his skills as a surgeon he’ll allow the police to believe the daughter has vanished. Disposing of the latest victim is his assistant, owing him for repairing her face, and this body is identified by the surgeon as his daughter. It allows him to bury the body of his surgical victim, pretending it is his (this kind of behavior sets him up as a serious sociopath), and allow everyone to believe his daughter is dead.

Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) keeps failing in the grafting experiments, using the faces of drugged women (stalked and manipulated by assistant, Louise (Alida Valli; she’s as complicate in what happens to the victims as the doc) in surgeries, transferring them to his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob). This process takes its toll on Christiane…how couldn’t it?

Part of what makes this film so extraordinary is Christiane to me. The mask and those glassy eyes. The way she moves like a ghost. Her haunting quality is iconic. I think her presence is still influential to this day. Mannequins remind me of her. There’s a scene where she quietly trips about her home, into the kennel where pops keeps dogs for grating experiments to embrace lovingly the dogs held prisoner in their cages, riled up but seemingly calmed by her presence among them, and spying on her father and Louise during their heinous activities in kidnapping, chloroforming, and eventually removing the face of a new victim. Calling up a boyfriend who believes she’s dead, Christiane just wants to hear his voice…but she wants to talk with him, but Louise is there to discourage that. Meanwhile Doctor Génessier tends to his patients at his clinic during the day, working on the dogs, and awaiting the next fresh victim with similar features to his daughter. He’s so cold-blooded and methodical, seemingly undeterred by any guilt, undaunted in his pursuit of the perfect face  for his daughter.

In the conversation between Louise and Christiane, we learn that Doctor Génessier was responsible for the wreck due to a rage overtaking him. This motivates the mad surgeon to do his very level best to provide a face for the girl his wreck ruined. I think you can see signs of wear and tear on the conscience of Louise, but she still dutifully assists in his grisly efforts. She eyes girls close in looks to Christiane, routinely follows them, selects them for surgery using methods that would convince them to trust her, and at some point Doctor Génessier uses an agent to send them to sleepy-town. The way Louise drives attentively to the destination of a dumping spot in the Parisian Seine, and discards the body of a victim at the opening of the movie implicates her as a willing and efficient cohort owing so much to the man who gave her a “new face”. I think both doctor and assistant are even terms disturbed.

To think that so much was going on in the estate in the affluent suburb in Paris, orchestrated by Doctor Génessier and Louise adds an unsettling level to the warped plot. The director allowing us to spend time in the surgery room, seeing a face being penciled and scalpeled, and the forceps helping to pry away the flesh to be applied to Christiane; this is a detailed, inert, and mechanical surgery, all matter-of-fact and clinical.

Edna: Casualty of a pretty face

The horrible fate of Edna is a chapter in the film that stands out due to the already mentioned surgery on her so that Christiane could have her face. Losing your face is bad enough, but this doesn’t hill her. Bandages on her head, imprisoned in a cell which favors a hospital room, and facing the probability she’d never be the same where she is, Edna (convinced to ride to the house by Louise who had capitalized on her poor status as a Swedish foreigner trying to get a fresh start in Paris) takes advantage of an opening of escape, knocking Louise across the noggin with a vase. But the house is locked, and running upstairs left nowhere to go. So out a window Edna chooses, crashing to the ground, killing her instantly. The body dumped in the mausoleum with the body found in the Seine, Edna’s last days weren’t particularly magical.What adds to the impact is how a series of images show the "new face" deteriorating. How devastating to Christiane to know that again a girl dies and the results were a failure.

But does this halt the efforts of Doctor Génessier? With a new face, it isn’t long before the flesh starts to die and ultimately what’s tragic about this? Edna died for nothing. Her face didn’t work. So another girl will be needed. This time, an eyewitness (a friend of Edna’s) identifies a woman with a pearl necklace “choking her”. Christiane’s beau knows Louise wears a pearl necklace and a plan by the police is hatched.

What I find fascinating about the following of a girl used by the police to see if Louise (and the doctor) would “bite” is that ultimately it isn’t law enforcement or a sting that brings down the murders…it is the “girl without a face”. Enough is enough. Christiane will take it upon herself to release the newest girl chosen to be a “face lost” in the sake of a guilty conscience and his diabolical use of science and surgical know-how to repair a face his car wreck destroyed. The only way it seems the doc and his assistant will be stopped is by Christiane. The film does show this girl just mentally withering away until she’s just a human shell as vacant as the white mask on her face. That visual, her masked face and gown in white, achieves a dark poetry to it that gives Eyes Without a Face a distinctive power that resonates. Her releasing the dogs upon her father (his face soon ripped apart in a case of dark irony), stabbing Louise in the throat with the scalpel that lent a hand in her face’s repair, and allowing the pigeons to fly out of their cages (symbolizing her own release from her prison inside her home) is what stops the madness. The police, funnily enough, were unable to catch them. It is a clever ruse incorporated into the plot. The police are piecing together clues that start to emerge, but they are duped all the way to the end.

A scene has Christiane begging Louise to give her suicidal release, and this falls on deaf ears. Louise isn’t about to let that happen. So instead, Christiane eventually is driven to the breaking point, never to return perhaps. Her freedom comes with a price.