dir. Georges Franju
writ. Jean Redon, Claude Sautet, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac (adaptation), Jean Redon (novel)
feat. Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob
Franju's tale of a plastic surgeon (Brasseur) who can't successfully repair his daughter's face, damaged in an auto accident he caused lends a dreamy French quality to a story that feels much like the Edgar Allen Poe, Roger Corman, Vincent Price films of the same era. Opting for black and white over the striking Technicolor of the Poe pictures, Franju bounces between stiff and occasionally stark moments of police and medical procedural and the gauzy, floating wandering of daughter Christiane (Scob) about the gothic estate. In her thin, eerie mask, forced upon her by her father and his demanding assistant (Valli), Christiane appears just shy of lifelike, real enough to show her sadness, yet incomplete, keeping joy out of reach.
The horror surfaces in the Doctor's obsessive need to fix Christiane's face and his methods, kidnapping similar looking young women and using their fresh faces as transplants. The twisted story of love and devotion is anchored by an unsettling surgery scene, the Dr. methodically marking and cutting away the skin of his victim in a misguided, desperate struggle for redemption that only distances him from his daughter, even as it illustrates the gruesome lengths to which a father will go. But more powerful than the gore is the harrowing pain and despair experienced by Christiane, a once lovely young woman now trapped not just in her tower, but by her own face.
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