I The Behrend Beacon
Sit down, relax, take your face off
In Georges Franju's 1959 French surrealist-fairy-tale-horror
film Eyes Without A Face, brought to visually-stunning new life
via Criterion's DVD release two years ago, a doctor uses any
means necessary to reconstruct his daughter's damaged face after
the two are involved in a horrible car accident. Sounds nice and
reasonable, right? Wrong. The
demented Docteur Genessier
played by the devilishly subtle
Pierre Brasseur. enlists the
help of his assistant/partner in
crime Louise (Alicia Valli) to
kidnap young Parisian women,
bring them hack to their
creepy mansion in the woods
and, in a deeply disturbing
twist, remove the skin of their
faces in an attempt to give the
doctor's daughter. Christiane
(Edith Scoh), a face transplant.
Recent television shows like
Fdith Scob stars as "Christiana" in
the reality show "Doctor
90210" and Fox's ficticious "Nip/Tuck" so easily exploit surgery
patients, broadcasting a variety of operations such as liposuction,
breast augmentations, face lifts and fixtures, hut nothing can com
pare to the audacity of the skillful skin graft specialist Docteur
Genessier. His relentless drive to fix Christiane's disfigured face is
more compelling and genuine than any television show.
Our first glimpse into this manic operation occurs immediately,
after a few minutes of Maurice Jarre's eerie, Circus-like music
score. At the film's beginning we see a woman, Louise, driving
late at night, a glimmer of sweat reflecting off of her face. As she
peers into the rearview mirror, a body lay in the backseat, its head
hunched over, bobbing slightly. Soon, the car pulls off the road
and Louise drags the body out the vehicle and drops it into a lake.
She leaves. We come to find out later that she's disposed one of the
doctor's "patient's. - It's Louise's job, throughout the film, to seek
out these young girls. In one scene, she befriends Edna, a student,
outside a theatre and promises her a room for rent at the doctor's
house. The two leave for the mansion, and, minutes upon their
arrival, Genessier suffocates the girl and takes her to the basement,
where he performs the operations.
Later, at the doctor's home outside Paris, we meet Christiane,
the doctor's beloved daughter. She's crying on a sofa, snug deep
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Bloc Party, Apples in Stereo and Reel Big Fish hit the shelves this month
February 6
Apples In Stereo / New Magnetic Wonder / Simian/Redeye
Bloc Party / A Weekend in the City / Dim Mak/Vice/Atlantic
Fall Out Boy / Infinity On High / Island/Fueled By Ramen/Decaydence
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Lucinda Williams / West / Lost Highway
Gerald Levert / In My Songs / Atlantic
February 20
The Ataris / Welcome to the Night / Isola Recordings/Sanctuary
Explosions in the Sky / All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone / Temporary
Residence Ltd.
Reel Big Fish and Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer / Duet All Night Long
r'lr
!!~J
By Sean Mihlo
student life editor
r' {ME frP J [
into a pile of pillows. The camera pans behind her as she lifts her
head up, looking at Louise who's been comforting her. Louise then
puts "the mask - on Christiane, and we see her walk around the
room. Her reflection is shown in a portrait of a girl and her doll
that hangs near her. Christiane has become, in some way, a doll for
her father, and she even looks like one too, with the mask on a
living doll. Dr. Genessier makes changes to Christiane's face
many times, and Franju doesn't shy away from showing us the del
icate and totally gross face
removal operation. There's no
gore, however, and not much
bloodshed. The real terror
comes from the doctor's
actions, his constant strive for
the perfect face. During a din
ner one night, after a suppos
edly successful face transplant
from Edna's face to
Christiane's, the doctor real
izes something after inspect
ing his daughter's face: he's
failed. The quest continues,
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Franju's eerie Eyes Without A Face.
By the film's end, however, Christiane discovers the inhumani
ty of her father's actions and takes complete control, freeing her
self from any shame that the doctor or Louise had caused her. Dr.
Crenessier and Louise, a former face-transplant patient of the doc
tor's herself, want a new face for Christiane more than she does.
And although she's terribly unhappy, she realizes a "new" face
won't change her life. She'll forever wear this mask a mask to
conceal her face and a mask to hide the horrific things her father
had done to the innocent girls he kidnapped and killed, whose own
faces were removed, left masked with bandages. Franju shows us
that the mask symbolizes the innocence of Christiane and pure evil
of Dr. Genessier, to not just repair his daughter's face, but turn her
into someone she isn't, to erase her identity just like he did with
Louise, turning her into his right-hand woman and accomplice.
A truly poetic and almost serene film, Eyes Without A Face
excellently captures the madness of one man's paternal instinct to
help his suffering daughter come back to life. The film won't ful
fill your blood-thirsty, zombie-eating, monster-rampaging horror
flick appetite, but it will stir your insiaes, cause a few squeals and
shrieks and make you wish you'd kept that Scream mask a few
years longer.
February 13
and Louise sets out to find
another blonde, blue-eyed vic-
At the box office
"Epic" tops new releases, Oscar noms
By Sean Mihlo
student life editor
Last weekend's box office
proved that even if you're nomi
nated for an Oscar, you might
not score big or within the top
10. In fact, the top five films
aren't even major contenders in
this year's heated Best Picture
race. Epic Movie, a film parody
ing cult classics like Willy
Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory, Lord of the Rings and
Snakes on a Plane, topped the
box office in its first week with
$18.6 million. Next, the star
studded action film Smokin'
Aces, starring Jeremy Piven, Ray
Liotta, Ben Affleck and in her
debut role, Alicia Keys, took
second with $14.6 million, also
in its first week of release.
Smokitr topped Affleck's wife,
Jennifer Garner's Catch and
Release. which debuted poorly
in the fifth position with a
measly $7.6 million. This proba
bly totally ticked off the execs at
Sony: the film cost an estimated
$25 million to make. Rounding
out the top five are Night at the
Museum and Stomp the Yard,
taking in $9.5 and $7.6 million
respectively.
Box office breakdown
Jamuary 26-28, 2007
1 Epic Movie $18,612,544
2 Smokin' Aces $14,638,755
3 Night at the Museum $9,557,664
4 Stomp the Yard $7,685,565
5 Catch and Release $7,6,5,8,898
6 Dreamgirls , $6,741,985
7 The Pursuit of Happyness $4,983,325
8 Pan's Labyrinth $4,774,578
9 The Queen $4,013,052
10 The Hitcher (2007) $3,632,975
11 Freedom Writers $3,514,548
12 The Departed $3,365,481
13 Notes on a Scandal $2,603,703
14 Babel $2,561,053
15 Children of Men $2,183,195
16 Blood and Chocolate $2,074,300
17 Letters from Iwo Jima $1,867,326
18 Arthur and the Invisibles $1,704,515
19 The Last King of Scotland $1,674,900
20 Charlotte's Web (2006) $1,496,105
*Statistics courtesy of BoxofficeMojo.com
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Friday, February 2, 2007
What's surprising about this
past weekend's box office, after
the Oscar nominees were
announced on Jan. 19, is that
most critically-acclaimed and
nominated films didn't even hit
the top 10. Even after a disap
pointing nomination diss for
Best Picture , Dreamgirls placed
sixth, in front of Best Actor
nominee Will Smith's The
Pursuit of Happyness, which
placed seventh. Guillermo del
Toro's adult fairy tale flick Pan's
Labyrinth, nominated this year
in five categories, including Best
Foreign Language Film, scored a
cool $4.7 million, placing it in
the eighth spot.
Helen Mirren has already
scored Golden Globe and Screen
Actors Guild awards for her per
formance in The Queen, and is
the favorite to win the Oscar for
Best Actress, which helped the
film tay in the ninth position for
the second week in a row. But
other Best Picture nods, The
Departed and Babel, scored out
side the top ten, in twelfth and
fourteenth, respectively. Notes
on a Scandal and Little Miss
Sunshine, the other two Best
Picture nominees, placed 13th
and 57th, respectively.