Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Yeux Sans Visage


Also Known As:
Eyes Without a Face
Year:
1960
Countries:
France
Italy
Predominant Genre:
Horror
Director:
Georges Franju
Best Performances:
None
Premiss:
A brilliant surgeon kidnaps young women. He removes their faces and tries to graft them onto the head on his beloved daughter, whose face has been entirely spoiled in a car crash.
Themes:
Guilt
White culture
Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
Unknown
Review Format:
DVD

The dreamlike plot makes little sense in this poetically-gory serial-killer movie.

A demented plastic surgeon and his lover kill young women who look like his daughter in order to surgically remove their faces and give them to his daughter who was disfigured in a car crash in which he was driving. These successively fail; leading to an ever-higher death toll in the increasingly-desperate search for a skin graft that will not be rejected.

A haunting disquisition on a father’s guilt at his selfish recklessness that he ultimately fails to come-to terms with: He cries over split milk rather than face his errors honestly to avoid endeavouring not to repeat them. It is also about the masks we wear to cover our true, less than perfect selves, as well as being an attack on unethical science and the pursuit of knowledge at any price.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.