Some comments on Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) (1960)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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11 September
Some comments on Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) (1960)
* Contains spoilers *
As there are no real developments on the Festival web-site, an afterthought on Eyes Without a Face (1960) : maybe the tenuous appearance of something to shock and disturb belies a deeper intention to amuse and divert.
After all, the dogs and how they are acquired (let alone what they are for) are passed off in a matter-of-fact way, but they do not bear the weight of examination, nor does why what is being shown done by one person at the opening needs two later on, save that we could not be misdirected that we are seeing a potential victim, rather than a perpetrator. Means of identification, too, may have been different fifty years ago, but, in the particular circumstances, it does not seem likely that a body's being established to be someone's relative could be as easy as it appears - and the thinking behind doing it does not seem to have been put it, because there is the inconvenient matter of a fiancé.
If this were viewed again, with all these elements (and, maybe, even the gruesome surgery) seen not as attempts to be plausible, but rather to tickle and titillate, how far would we then be from seeing this - as another casual critic has described it - as the greatest horror film ever, and instead as a jocular symphony played on the elements of the genre?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
