Classic Films in Focus: EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)

Horror is a genre that encompasses many things. Although today's horror films tend to focus on the explicit nature of graphic violence, classic horror films often eschew such overt terrors for the subtler approach, suggesting that things unseen are far more terrible than anything we could actually be shown. Eyes without a Face (1960) is very much an example of this other kind of horror. The eyes of the title belong to a girl whose mutilated face is never clearly revealed to us, and the movie is much the better for it. This is not a gore fest, and it is not a film for the shallow adolescents who crowd the multiplex for the latest installment of torture porn. This is art, and it shows in every detail of this lyrical, haunting, and deeply disturbing film.

The plot hinges on face transplantation, a timely subject since today's headlines are full of the latest developments in that field. A famous surgeon (Pierre Brasseur) finds the perfect guinea pig for these transplants in his own daughter (Edith Scob), whose face has been destroyed in a car accident caused by the doctor himself. Aided by a maniacally devoted assistant (Alida Valli), the doctor abducts young women and grafts their faces onto the unfortunate Christiane in an attempt to make medical history and alleviate his own guilt over the accident. Christiane, however, proves an increasingly unwilling subject, in despair over her own disfigurement but more and more horrified by her father's demented attempts to cure it.

Prisons are the theme here. Christiane lives in the prison of her father's house, unable to be a part of the world outside, and she is further imprisoned by the smooth, lifeless mask that covers her ruined face. We see birds in cages, dogs locked up in dark kennels, victims strapped to operating tables, and all of them function as doubles of Christiane. The doctor himself is caught in a prison of guilt and obsession, while his assistant wears her tight pearl choker like a chain, hiding the scars that tie her to him just as she seems to try to hide her unrequited passion for him. Nobody is able to escape, until Christiane finally emerges from her chrysalis like an apocalyptic butterfly, floating through the final scenes to leave death and freedom (they are the same to her) in her wake.

Director Georges Franju enhances these elements through his brilliant use of sound. You could watch this film with your eyes closed and still know it was a masterpiece. The opening theme accompanies the assistant, Louise, as she stalks and disposes of the victims. It's like carousel music, full of menacing horror beneath its falsely cheerful lilt. Christiane's music is more like that of a jewelry box, one with a broken ballerina inside. Animal sounds punctuate key scenes, with the dogs in particular howling and barking like souls of the damned locked up in the doctor's secret underground rooms.

I should warn you that the operation scenes can be hard to watch, even though gore is not the movie's aim. The effects work for the removal of the victim's face is startling, even in black and white. You keep hoping that something will happen to stop this slow destruction of a human being, but it doesn't, and the process seems excruciatingly slow, even though the whole film only lasts about 90 minutes. Even in the age of excessively realistic medical dramas the scene has the power to repulse and disturb.

Ultimately, Eyes without a Face plays out like a more plausible version of Frankenstein, and it asks many of the same difficult questions that Mary Shelley's novel placed before readers almost two centuries ago. That story was also concerned with the failures of fathers, with Victor Frankenstein's willingness to create a monster and become one himself in pursuit of his desire to cheat nature. It is a warning that continues to be given to us because we are still not listening to it. Franju's beautiful film about ugly things is an excellent exploration of just these concerns. If you want a horror film that transcends its genre, this is the picture for you.

For more of Alida Valli, see The Third Man (1949) and the Italian horror classic, Suspiria (1977). You’ll find Pierre Brasseur in Children of Paradise (1945). Edith Scob, who is still working in 2012, has starred most recently in Holy Motors (2012). For more atmospheric French thrills, try Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Les Diaboliques (1954).

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ending of LES DIABOLIQUES (1955)

Spoiler alert! This essay discusses the ending of the film at length. Viewers who want to be surprised by the ending should not read this post until after they have seen the movie for themselves.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 French thriller, Les Diaboliques (also known as Diabolique), is famous for its twist ending, which the film’s promotional material begged viewers to keep secret in order to preserve the shock value for later audiences. Like the best surprise endings, the twist of Les Diaboliques hides in plain sight; it is both unexpected and inevitable. In fact, the clues about the movie’s ending are everywhere in the scenes that precede it, even in the title of the film itself. Aptly named “The Fiends” for its diabolical characters, Les Diaboliques presents us with two characters who rightly lay claim to such a title, while its third protagonist is persistently associated with angels and saints. Two of these characters belong together, but the film encourages the viewer to mistake which two in spite of its own strong hints about the truth.

The set-up misleads us by suggesting that the two women are the titular fiends for plotting the murder of the man both of them seem to hate. Nicole (Simone Signoret) is the smarter, tougher, and more ruthless of the pair, while Christina (Véra Clouzot) is the meeker follower. Nicole is the sexually transgressive mistress, while Christina is the legal wife, but Nicole seems far more determined to murder Michel (Paul Meurisse), which is immediately suspicious since Nicole does not act like the kind of woman who would take such a risk without getting some material good from it. Michel is a faithless brute, to be sure, but Christina balks at murder because her religious faith has already dissuaded her from getting a divorce. She only goes along with the plot at Nicole’s insistence, even though Michel has obviously abused her and openly hopes for her death.

In spite of her real abhorrence for Michel, Christina is no fiend, and nearly every scene in the movie places her firmly in the realm of the angels. Even her name associates her with her Christian faith. With her prayers and pigtails, she embodies the asexual purity of the virgin martyr; she even keeps an altar in her bedroom. Only once do we see Michel initiate a sexual encounter with Christina, and this scene plays out as a rape that cuts away as Christina pathetically protests. The camera shoots Christina in a way that complements our sense of her as victim and martyr, emphasizing her pale face and small size. These roles are established early on and are repeated as the various physicians foretell her death; she is slowly succumbing to heart failure even as the movie begins, and she becomes increasingly fragile as the narrative unfolds, especially after the disappearance of Michel’s corpse. 

As it turns out, the real fiends of the story are Nicole and Michel, who have concocted an incredibly complicated plot to kill Christina. By making Christina believe she has committed murder they intend to destroy her heart both literally and figuratively. Truly demonic in their cruelty and greed, Nicole and Michel refuse to wait patiently for Christina to die on her own, and they manipulate her in the most painful and vicious manner imaginable. They are, in short, a perfect couple, a pair of pitiless fiends. The only justification for their elaborate scheme - they could just jump out of a closet a few times and accomplish the same goal, and in Gaslight all it takes are some flickering lamps and a few missing items -  is their wicked delight in tormenting Christina spiritually as well as physically. 

Christina’s death at the end of the movie is thrown into some doubt when a young student at the boarding school says that he saw her and spoke to her, but this, too, supports our sense of her character as a religious martyr. Christina dies terrified by Michel’s apparent return from the grave, her heart finally exhausted by fear, but we know that death was inevitable for her, anyway. Michel has merely hastened the event. Michel and Nicole are caught and punished for their actions, which gives us a sense of justice in this world for Christina, but the anecdotal account of her return suggests spiritual justice, too. There is no reason to think that Christina is physically alive at the end of the movie – that would merely be a stay of execution for her, and nothing in the film implies that she stages her death as Michel had staged his. Instead, the story of her reappearance and kindness to the boy convey an idea of Christina’s soul being preserved; she is free now from her own ruined body and her antagonists’ cruelty. For a religious martyr, that’s as good an ending as one is going to get.

If you like Les Diaboliques, try other twisted thrillers like Gaslight (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1945), and, of course, Vertigo (1959), which also began as a story by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. For a better sense of the religious overtones of the film, try watching The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) first and then looking at Clouzot’s representation of Christina again.

Classic Films in Focus: SUMMER STOCK (1950)

Directed by Charles Walters, Summer Stock (1950) is the third and final pairing of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, two of the greatest musical performers of all time. Many classic movie fans regard it as the best of their pictures together, not only because of their own performances and songs but also because of the first-rate cast in the supporting roles, including Marjorie Main, Eddie Bracken, Phil Silvers, and Ray Collins. Although the story is just another variant of the “let’s put on a show” plot, the comedy and musical numbers make Summer Stock worth watching, especially for fans of the hilarious Phil Silvers.

Struggling farmer Jane Falbury (Garland) isn’t pleased when her spoiled younger sister, Abigail (Gloria DeHaven), returns home with a company of actors in tow, but Jane agrees to let the group stage their production in the barn in exchange for their help around the farm. Jane’s fiancé, Orville (Eddie Bracken), is even less happy about the arrangement, especially because the leader of the group is handsome Joe Ross (Kelly). Despite Jane’s engagement and Joe’s relationship with Abigail, romantic sparks fly as the two get to know one another and work together to accomplish their goals.

Garland’s problems at the time of the production have been thoroughly canvassed by film historians and those who knew her, but the strain that caused her to leave work on Annie Get Your Gun (1950) isn’t visible on screen. She looks heavier, certainly, but the more solid figure works to the advantage of her character, a working farmer, and her opening and closing numbers burst with that iconic Garland power. “Get Happy,” which serves as the film’s finale, doesn’t really fit into the rest of the movie but is such a great performance that nobody really cares. Kelly demonstrates his usual charm and prowess, and his solo dance number in the barn proves one of the high points of the picture.

While the leads stay busy doing the romance thing, the supporting players create comic chaos, and any one of the comedians featured could steal a film right out from under the stars’ perfectly shaped noses. Eddie Bracken blusters, blunders, and sneezes as Jane’s flustered fiancé, and Marjorie Main serves up a hearty helping of her usual “Ma Kettle” character. Phil Silvers, however, gets all the best laughs with his antics and constant stream of jokes. His first number with Kelly, “Dig-Dig-Dig Dig for Your Dinner” is funny enough, but the show stopper is “Heavenly Music,” which features Kelly and Silvers dressed as hillbillies, complete with giant rubber feet and a chorus of barking dogs.

See more of Kelly and Garland together in For Me and My Gal (1942) and The Pirate (1948). Kelly, of course, is best known for Singin’ in the Rain (1952), while Garland is celebrated for The Wizard of Oz (1939). You’ll find Garland and Marjorie Main together in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Harvey Girls (1946), but Main also makes memorable appearances in The Women (1939) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). Eddie Bracken stars in the Preston Sturges comedies The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). Catch Phil Silvers in Cover Girl (1944) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). Director Charles Walters also helmed Easter Parade (1948), High Society (1956), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

For more about Judy Garland, read "10 classic movies starring Judy Garland" on Examiner.com. 

Classic Films in Focus: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936)

Frank Capra’s favorite themes are all in play in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), which stars lanky Gary Cooper as a typical Capra hero, an all-American everyman standing in opposition to a corrupt and selfish world. Equal parts social commentary and romance, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town sets the stage for later Capra pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) but still shows a lot of the feisty chemistry of It Happened One Night (1934). In addition to Cooper, the movie features an especially effective performance from Jean Arthur as the cynical city girl whose world view is shaken by Deeds’ transparent decency.

Cooper plays the appropriately named Longfellow Deeds, a small town postcard poet who unexpectedly inherits a huge fortune and is whisked away to a life of luxury in New York City. Everyone he meets there is on the make, including the estate’s crooked lawyers and reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), who deceives Deeds in order to milk him for outrageous headlines but ends up falling for his straightforward charm. Babe inevitably throws her allegiance over to Deeds in an effort to save him from the schemes of a cabal of greedy attorneys who want his fortune for themselves.

Everything we really need to understand about the hero is included in his name, which has the same symbolic transparency as “Jefferson Smith.” Cooper really is a long fellow, but his character’s improbable given name mostly underscores his identity as a populist poet, in other words, a man who speaks for the people. In the city, however, words become the twisted weapons of the enemy, and then we literally know our hero by his deeds. These two elements of his personality play out in Deeds’ decision to give his unwanted wealth away to victims of the Depression and his eventual courtroom defense of that act, which the lawyers have seized as evidence of Deeds’ mental instability.

Cooper plays Deeds as a more formidable combatant than the Capra heroes embodied by Jimmy Stewart; he’s far more ready and able to knock his opponents down, and he does in fact punch quite a few people over the course of the picture. Jean Arthur, one of Capra’s favorite leading ladies, plays Babe as the twin sister to her character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; both are too smart for their own good but prove remarkably vulnerable to the naïve, straight arrow type. Douglass Dumbrille is always entertaining as a villain people love to hate, and his two-faced attorney is a perfect figure of every professional stereotype. Silent era veteran H.B. Warner, another Capra regular, puts in a memorable if brief appearance as the bemused judge who presides over Deeds’ insanity hearing.

Frank Capra won his second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which earned five Academy Award nominations in all. For more of Gary Cooper, see Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and High Noon (1952), as well as the hilarious screwball comedy, Ball of Fire (1941). Don’t miss Jean Arthur’s final film appearance in Shane (1953). Douglass Dumbrille can also be seen in Baby Face (1933), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Ten Commandments (1956).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.