Eyes Without a Face

Eyes Without a Face

Directed by Georges Franju • 1960 • France
Starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, François Guérin

At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price. EYES WITHOUT A FACE, directed by the supremely talented Georges Franju, is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release. There are images here—of terror, of gore, of inexplicable beauty—that once seen are never forgotten.

Eyes Without a Face
  • Eyes Without a Face

    Directed by Georges Franju • 1960 • France
    Starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, François Guérin

    At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—a...

Extras

  • Edith Scob on EYES WITHOUT A FACE

    In this 2013 interview, actor Edith Scob discusses the making of EYES WITHOUT A FACE and her iconic character, Christiane Génessier.

  • Georges Franju on BLOOD OF THE BEASTS

    This excerpt from an episode of the French television series “Cinéma de notre temps” features Georges Franju explaining why he made BLOOD OF THE BEASTS, the challenges of expressing cinematic “truth,” and the aesthetic advantages of black and white over color.

  • “Ciné-parade”: Georges Franju, 1982

    In this excerpt from “Le fantastique,” a 1982 episode of the French television show “Ciné-parade,” director Georges Franju discusses fantastic cinema, his theories about horror, and finding terror in the everyday.

  • Les grands-pères du crime

    Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novels provided the basis for such cinema classics as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE and Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, and the authors cowrote the screenplay for EYES WITHOUT A FACE. In these excerpts from the 1985 documentary LES GRANDS-PÈRES DU CRIME, the ...

  • Jonathan Lethem on EYES WITHOUT A FACE

  • Guillermo del Toro on EYES WITHOUT A FACE

  • EYES WITHOUT A FACE U.S. Trailer

    When EYES WITHOUT A FACE came out in the U.S. in 1962, it was in a reedited, English-dubbed version titled THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTUS, which was presented on a double bill with THE MANSTER.

  • Blood of the Beasts

    Directed by Georges Franju • 1949 • France

    This 1949 documentary by Georges Franju looks at the brutal reality of Paris’s abattoirs, while employing a disarmingly beautiful visual style.