Director: Georges Franju
Writers: Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau
Stars: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2K2eg9H
A woman is driving alone late at night. There’s someone asleep in the back seat, and the woman seems nervous. She parks next to a raging river. She gets out, drags the body down to the water, and throws it into the river.
Professor Genessier is giving a speech about tissue transplant. It requires too much radiation, so that doesn’t work. So they rely on exsanguination. He’s clearly an expert on transplantation.
He gets a phone call from the morgue, and someone mentions that he hasn’t been the same since his daughter went missing. He needs to go identify the body. The detectives think the girl found in the river might be his daughter. Her face is missing, and the professor’s daughter is known to have lost hers in an accident, so the descriptions match. Only the eyes are intact. Still, it looks like someone surgically removed this girl’s face, so it might not be her.
The professor arrives, and he says “It’s her. Christiane.” There’s another father waiting, Mr. Tossoul, who also though the body was his daughter’s, but the professor is certain it’s Christiane, so they don’t let the other man see the body.
He looks dazed and lost at the funeral. Her fiance, Jacques, is there. The professor’s assistant, a foreigner named Louise, are there as well. The assistant, who is the same woman we saw dumping the body in the river, seems very upset about the professor putting flowers on the grave. They drive home to a huge house in the country. He parks in the garage next to the same car we saw the woman driving in the opening. We hear a bunch of dogs barking in the distance.
He goes upstairs and talks to Christiane, who is not actually dead but has found and read her own obituary. She’s pouting in her room next to the caged birds. It seems that the secretary dumped the body in the river at the Professor’s bequest to make it look like his daughter had died so they would stop searching for her. Christiane has a horribly disfigured face and always keeps it turned away from the camera. He father, the professor, caused the disfigurement in a car crash; he was driving like a maniac. He also killed the other girl to do a face transplant with his daughter, but it didn’t work. Finally, we see her face, and it’s a thick plastic mask.
She wanders around her gilded prison of a palace. She can’t leave, but she has freedom to wander around the house. She calls her fiance, but can’t talk to him. She has become a secret.
Meanwhile, Louise, the secretary, is out in town, scouting for more girls. She finds a young student, Edna, and tells her she’s found her a room to rent. They get into her car and drive to the estate, which she knows she can’t possibly rent; something is wrong. She hears the dogs barking and is afraid, but has no choice but to go inside with Louise. The professor plays along with the “rent a room” story for a while, and then he chloroforms the girl.
They carry the girl down to a secret lab behind the garage with a secret door and the works. Christiane watches all this. This time, the professor is going to remove the entire face all at once, not in sections. He’s learning as he goes.
Christiane goes into the lab and looks around. She goes behind the lab and finds dozens of large dogs in cages. They’re trapped just like she is. Caged birds. Caged dogs. Caged girls. The metaphors are getting deep here. She takes her mask off and goes to see the new face, still on the donor. Edna wakes up, sees the scarred face, and screams. We finally get a look too, and yeah, it’s pretty bad. Clearly, Christiane is not against what her father is doing, as she doesn’t make any attempt to help the girl.
Later, they all go to the lab and the transplant procedure begins. The scene is a little slow, but it looks like serious surgery. The effects here are very good, possibly enhanced by the black and white film. When they remove the girl’s face, it’s a super-creepy and well-executed shot. For a time before CGI, it’s very realistic and creative.
A man brings in an abandoned dog to the professor. Why does the professor collect stray dogs? He uses them for surgery practice!
Louise comes in and mentions that the surgery is healing well. Edna, the kidnapped girl, is eating and alive. She knocks Louise over the head and runs out, attempting an escape. She runs up the stairs to Christiane’s room. She jumps out the window to her death. They take her body to the cemetery and put it in the crypt next to “Christiane’s” corpse.
Edna’s friend reports her disappearance to the police. She tells about seeing the woman with the thick pearl necklace, which we know Louise wears to cover up a scar on her neck. The police look at her photo and realize the two missing girls look a lot alike. Could there be a pattern?
We jump forward in time, and see the professor, Louise, and Christiane sitting at dinner. The girl’s face looks healthy, real, and normal. Now it’s time to get her a new identity. She wonders about Jacques, her former fiancé. The professor looks nervous after examining her. He admits to Louise that he’s failed. We get a time-lapse collage of her new face rotting off. Her body rejects the skin over the next few weeks. She calls Jacques and says his name aloud over the phone.
Christiane asks Louise to kill her; to get one of those injections her father uses on the dogs when the surgery goes wrong.
Jacques goes to the police and tells them he recognized Christiane’s voice on the phone. He hears about the pearl choker and immediately suspects Louise, telling the police that she always wears one. The police call in a girl, Paulette, who looks similar to the missing girls, and they want her to be bait in a trap. The professor performs a few tests on her, which are all negative, and she goes home.
Sure enough, on the walk home, Louise offers Paulette a lift. Next thing we see is Pauline on the operating table. The police come asking for the professor as he prepares surgery. The doctor answers their questions, and they leave satisfied.
Meanwhile, Paulette wakes up. Christiane cuts her loose and stabs Louise right in the pearl necklace. Christiane then lets all the dogs out of their cages. The dogs come across the professor outside. They all pile on and kill the professor. She then lets all the birds out of their cages, and they’re a little less vicious. Then she walks off into the woods.
Commentary
The photography is very sharp, and it all looks good for being black and white. The music alternates from fun and whimsical to creepy and dangerous– it’s perfect for this film. Christiane’s mask looks like something out of an old Twilight Zone episode; very doll-like. Again, the black and white probably makes it look creepier than color would. The dog-mauling scene was predictable but surprisingly graphic.
There are a lot of similarities to “The Skin I Live In” from 2011. This has a lot less action and gore, but it’s a much more coherent film. It’s moody, stylish, the suspense builds, and the payoff is worthwhile. I definitely recommend it, especially to someone who may be looking to apreciate B&W films but finds the old one boring.