Cult/ Eyes Without a Face at HOME
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
HOME continue their series of cult film screenings with a subversive horror from 1960 France. Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face is a beautifully composed tale of a skilled surgeon who uses his skills to attempt to restore his daughter’s face after she is seriously disfigured. Based upon a novel by Jean Redon, the film has been praised for its dark poetry — with some going as far to make comparisons to the work of Jean Concteau — as well as for the way in which it comments on the state of post-war Europe.
The film’s unflinching scenes of surgery shocked critics and audiences on release, and Eyes Without a Face maintains an ability to provoke and disturb some sixty years on from then. Indeed, the film continues to influence filmmakers from Jess Franco to Pedro Almodóvar, who’s 2011 award-winning The Skin I Live In starring Antonio Banderas picked up where the French director left off.
