This 1959 French movie begins as a determined woman drives frantically into the night, glancing behind at the hatted figure in her backseat. Jaunty circus-music plays in the background as the figure slumps over like a sack: it is apparently a corpse. Once the driving woman makes sure that no one is around, she stops her car and deposits the corpse into the Seine river. As she drags the body along the banks of the river, we can see that it is the body of a young woman.

A few days later, the young woman’s body has been recovered, and two fathers with missing daughters are summoned by the police. One of the men, Dr. Génessier, sees the body and identifies it as his own daughter, Christiane.

At Christiane Génessier’s funeral, we learn that Dr. Génessier is a celebrated surgeon. And among the mourners we also see the same woman who deposited the body in the river – she is Dr. Génessier’s secretary, Louise.

After the funeral, Dr. Génessier and Louise return to their home, and his diabolical scheme is revealed: Christiane is not dead after all, but her face was mutilated in an auto accident. Dr. Génessier, with Louise’s assistance, kidnaps comely young women who resemble his daughter and attempts to graft their faces onto the face-less Christiane. And the body buried that day in the Génessier family mausoleum is that of the latest victim who did not survive the procedure.

We see Dr. Génessier’s evil in action as Louise lures their next victim, Edna, to their compound, and they methodically perform their evil task. The following face-transplant scene ranks up there as one of the most claustrophobic and terrifying of all horror movie surgery scenes. This procedure proves more successful than the last, and Christiane’s face is temporarily restored. Edith Scob (the actress who plays Christiane) is so lovely that it’s almost a shame that Dr. Génessier is not successful – the graft rots off after a few days.

Despite being a wicked man, Dr. Génessier is soft-spoken and deliberate, almost dignified, making his actions seem more psychotic in comparison. Like all mad scientists, Dr. Génessier is eventually destroyed by the monster he creates – and that monster is his own God-complex.

Christiane’s eyes stare dolefully from behind a doll-like mask she wears to cover her disfigured face. She spends her days wandering around the house crank calling her former fiancé, and petting the caged dogs on whom her father practices his skin-grafting techniques. She wears diaphanous gowns which drape her shoulders like a cape and walks as if she is floating. She is described as “angelic” by Louise, and with a name like Christiane, it is a given that she is the allegorical Christ-figure. But despite her celestial demeanor, Christiane is somewhat complicit in her father’s hideous plans, and seems hopeful of his success – she misses her old face, after all. At some point she even covetously fondles Edna’s face, the face which is about to become hers.

This is an elegant horror movie that is a little-seen, hard-to-find gem. The theme of this movie has been echoed in such current cinema fare as Silence of the Lambs and John Woo's Face/Off. Billy Idol also wrote a song that was inspired by this movie. Both breathtakingly beautiful and genuinely frightening, its indelible images are sure to make you gasp with both horror and wonder. Unfortunately, it's not widely available and difficult to locate a copy - but well worth hunting down, especially if you like scary movies.

As befitting a horror movie, the atmosphere is full of genuine dread, and most scenes are almost completely devoid of incidental music or even noise. But two pieces of music by composer Maurice Jarre are used very effectively: the cacophonous circus tune that accompanies Louise’s dutiful mischief, and the plaintive strain of the Thème romantique that plays softly as Christiane despairs. This theme wails at the end of the movie and merges with the original circus tune in a crescendo of Christiane’s eventual triumph: liberation from her father's pact with the devil.



NOTE: This was written for ingysdayoff's Foreign Film Write-Off. Please check out his profile page for details. Thank you!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age