Every movie we see #123: Eyes Without A Face is the most gorgeous horror film
119. Playing It Cool. We’ll assume Chris Evans (Captain America) had a huge personal debt of gratitude to the filmmakers, which is why he agreed to star in this romcom. It’s not terrible, but there is no particular reason it must exist. The movie’s conceit is that it is an anti-romcom. If it’s anti-romcom you want, then the movie you should see is…
120. They Came Together. Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd mess with the tropes of the romantic comedy with varying levels of success, but the parts that worked left us howling with laughter.
121. Paris vu par. Six episodes that take place in six different parts of the city by six directors of the French New Wave, including Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard. In the Godard, a young woman sends two love letters to her two lovers, but unfortunately switches them. In the Chabrol, a boy plots against his parents, and in the Rohmer a prissy store clerk thinks he has killed a thug on the street.
122. Les Visiteurs du Soir. Are the words “Criterion Collection” enough to make you watch a DVD? In our case, it’s a ringing endorsement. In this medieval fantasy by Marcel Carne, shot during the German Occupation, two minstrels appear at a castle and start interfering with everyone’s love life. They turn out to be the Devil’s emissaries, and they discover that their boss has some serious competition.
Police are baffled by a string of disappearances in Paris. The missing are all young women of a certain physical type, in their early 20s. They turn out to be the materials in a surgeon’s experiment to reconstruct the face of his beautiful daughter, disfigured in a car accident.
This horror movie isn’t scary at all, but it is eerie and strangely lyrical. (Presumably it was the inspiration for the Billy Idol song.) Though it has a recognizable 20th century setting, it seems to happen outside of time. And for a movie built around horrible disfigurement, it’s gorgeous.
Yes, it’s another version of the mad doctor story, and the plot is ludicrous but we take it seriously (Unlike that action howler, Face-Off). Eyes Without A Face is like those fairy tales we heard as children that kept us awake at night because we knew those characters couldn’t possibly live happily ever after.
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