Eyes Without a Face
Cinema is a screen onto which we can project our fears, torments and the monstrosities of the world. The screen protects us from what we see, but cinema has also permanently anchored our nightmares around a few powerful images (empty houses, hostile attics and basements, demonic masks, bloodcurdling grimaces, disturbing postures). Throughout the summer, the Cinémathèque québécoise will be presenting a series of films encompassing more than one hundred and twenty years of horror, reminding us that what scares us most is to make the deepest of our fears tangible and credible.
A surgeon tries to restore the face of his daughter, disfigured in a serious accident. His obsession leads him to criminal means. Franju's second feature remains his most famous.
Georges Franju
Georges Franju is a French film director. In 1936, with Henri Langlois, he helped found the Cinémathèque française, with the support of Paul-Auguste Harlé. In 1938, he became executive secretary of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). After the Second World War, Georges Franju made a name for himself with short documentaries such as Le Sang des bêtes and Hôtel des Invalides. Franju's cold, poetic, fantastical style of directing can be found in his feature-length films such as La Tête contre les murs and his masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage. Then in 1963, in Judex with Edith Scob and Francine Bergé, he displayed his penchant for the unusual and affirmed his taste for expressionist staging. He also adapted François Mauriac's Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962) and Émile Zola's La Faute de l'abbé Mouret (1970).
