Eyes Without a Face (1960) on Netflix
A surgeon keeps his disfigured daughter Christiane hidden in his mansion, promising her a new face. His assistant Louise brings him young women for face transplants.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.6/1039,720 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Outside Paris, a woman throws a body into the river, and Dr. Génessier identifies the remains as his daughter Christiane, disfigured in the car crash he caused. In truth, Christiane is alive in his mansion, her ruined face under a mask, while he promises to restore it. The dead woman is one of the girls whose skin he tried to graft onto her, and his assistant Louise keeps finding new ones. Christiane's fiancé, Jacques Vernon, works at the clinic and believes she is dead; when she phones him, she says nothing and hangs up. In Paris, Louise befriends a young woman named Edna Grüber and offers her a room at the house.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Singer Billy Idol cited Eyes Without a Face on VH1 Storytellers in 2001 as the idea for his song "Eyes Without a Face", whose chorus repeats the film's French title; it became his first top-10 hit in the U.S.
- Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar said his 2011 film The Skin I Live In, about a mad scientist who performs skin grafts and surgeries on an unwilling victim, was heavily influenced by Eyes Without a Face.
- To avoid trouble with European censors, producer Borkon cautioned Franju against too much blood for French censors, tortured animals for English censors and mad-scientist characters for German censors, all three of which were in the novel.
- Writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac shifted the story's focus from Doctor Génessier to his daughter Christiane, which made the doctor more understandable and helped avoid the censorship restrictions.
- Though it passed European censors, the film caused controversy on its release in Europe: L'Express reported the audience "dropped like flies" during the heterografting scene, and seven viewers fainted at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival.
- For the 1962 US release, retitled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, the film was edited: parts of the face-transplant scene and scenes of Doctor Génessier's gentler side, such as his care for a small child at his clinic, were removed.
