Synopsis
Doctor Génessier who runs a clinic in the outskirts of Paris kidnaps and kills beautiful women with a help of his assistant. He removes their faces and tries to graft them onto the head of his Christiane, whose face has been entirely spoiled in a car crash. Plus, his assistant Louise already underwent transplant surgery. Georges FRANJU's second fiction film Eyes Without a Face stirred controversy when it was released. A fixed camera shot blood and a brain under a face, transplant surgery, Christiane's brain falling on her face and it shocked French film industry in which it did not have horror films yet. The industry took the film as a "gore" film. But it was not the first time FRANJU was blamed for cruel scenes. In Blood of the Beats(1948), he showed real blood, flesh, violence and death in a slaughterhouse. His film shows flesh and blood in the street of Paris when Nazi left and African countries were liberated from imperialists. FRANJU laid a groundwork of Cinematheque Francaise with Henry LANGLOIS. Considering this, this film contains traditional Western expressionism from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu and so on with a popular novel plot. Claude SAULET and Maurice JARRE contributed to this film through adaptation and music. Needless to say, doves accompany Christiane who embarks on her last journey and facial transplant surgery scenes had impact on John WOO's Face Off. (SHIN Eun Shil)