Modern audiences, of course, recognize and even worship the horror genre as a way to explore some of the darkest avenues of human behavior. Fifty years ago, however, producing and releasing a horror movie was much more challenging. One of the most harrowing obstacles (besides dubious critics) was the censors.
Director Georges Franju essentially designed the film to evade censorship in Europe by carefully toeing the line- showing blood, but not an obscene amount; implying but not depicting the experimentation and torture of animals. In addition, Franju hired the extremely talented writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac to adapt the script from the original novel; the two had previously worked on Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Their work resulted in an important difference between the novel by Jean Redon and the film: Christiane, Dr. Genessier's daughter with an a disfigured face, became the center of the script. This shift is one of the most effective ways that Eyes Without a Face is elevated from a simplistic horror film to a serious work of art.
With Christiane, Eyes Without a Face presents its audience with a serious meditation on identity. Having been in a terrible car accident caused by her father, Christiane is left unrecognizable. Dr. Genessier, motivated by guilt and an egotistical desire to advance science, attempts multiple heterograft surgeries on Christiane, in an attempt to restore her beauty, her face, and with it, her identity.
In losing her face, Christiane also loses herself. Dr. Grenessier stages a faux funeral using the body of a previous donor who had died after an attempted facial transplant; thus, even her fiance Jacques believes her to be dead. She is forced by her father to wear a smooth white mask, hiding her deformities.
"My face frightens me," she says to her father, distraught. "My mask frightens me even more." This underscores the loss of identity which comprises the core of Eyes Without a Face. Christiane is thrown into existential anguish worthy of Sartre. Her life has been (figuratively, at least) taken from her; all that she loves has been taken from her; her face, the most discernibly human feature of the body, "is an open wound." What is Christiane, then? She is reduced to weakness and frailty; she is unable to act against her father's monstrous experiments despite her objection to them. Without her face, and her identity, she is nothing. She spends most of the film in misery and existential oblivion.
However, Christiane does eventually free herself, symbolically and otherwise. She kills Louise, her father's secretary and a sucessfull recipient of an heterograph. She releases the dogs and the doves that had been held captive with her, as well as her father's intended heterograft donor; all of these being victims of Dr. Grenessier's imprisonment. She walks out of her father's lab with a dove in her hand, freeing herself; the audience is filled with a sense of hope, perhaps imagining her reuniting with her fiance, who believes she is still alive.
Of course, Dr. Grenessier does not escape unharmed. In fact, he does not escape at all. The archetypal mad scientist is, in a violently poetic and endlessly satisfying scene, is ripped apart by his own test subjects: his dogs. He is killed and his face is mutilated, just as Christiane's is.
The artistry of the film doesn't stop at the elegant articulation of its themes, however. It is visually exciting throughout. Cinematographer Eugen Shufftan and Franju borrow from the previous German expressionists; they use strong lines, angles, and exaggerated shadows to give the film a feeling of psychological disturbance. This technique not only excites the audience into a high level of unease, but also allows us to experience how the world must feel for Christiane.
In Eyes Without a Face, Franju skillfully blends elements of fantasy with those of reality, elevating both the horrific and artistic elements of the film. Eyes Without a Face perfectly retains emotional realism, especially with its exploration of Christiane's identity crisis. At the same time, the fantastic (the Nino Rota-esque score that conjures images of a terrifying circus freak show, the exaggerated shadows, the mask that Christiane wears) inspires a deeper and more impactful level of fear than the emotional realism alone could affect.
Eyes Without a Face is, in the end, a masterful film that successfully manages to balance its artistry and its terror. It thoroughly explores the questions of identity, morality, and the potential for evil in science, challenging its audience to experience fear while at the same time intellectually processing the material it presents. Its "fairytale realism" gave new insight into what a horror film could be. Eyes Without a Face is now considered a classic, proving the censure of French critics at the time of its release unfounded.
No comments:
Post a Comment