Burned By Love

Earlier this month, Dallas Weins, first male recipient of a successful face transplant after a work accident left his face horribly disfigured, has married a woman he met in a burn victims support group. Dallas' new wife, Jamie Nash, who was severely burned in a car accident while texting, in light of their marriage wrote on the TXT L8R Foundation's website, " I would truly feel lost without him by my side. Our love is deep and strong, and together we will achieve greatness."

Their story is one of extreme sadness and heartache, yet through intense physical pain, numerous surgeries and enduring years of loss, both survivors  have found true love and can now look towards a life together with a happier ending.

The next story you will be presented with is a little different.

DVD Cover

Eyes Without a Face (Les yuex sans visage) is an exquisitely crafted, haunting and beautiful poetic French masterwork directed by Georges Franju.

Set in the secluded French countryside, an obsessive surgeon meticulously noodles
away in his lab trying to restore the beauty of his daughter's disfigured face, injuries suffered in an automobile accident - of which he was the driver.

Dr. Genessier is guilt-ridden, covering up the accident by faking his daughter's death. Along with the help of his assistant, Louise, the duo kidnap young women who share similar features to that of his daughter, bringing them back to his house and performing radical and gruesome face transplant procedures.

The disfigured girl, Christiane, is left to roam the spacious halls of her family's gothic mansion, every mirror in the house covered with black material as in an attempt to keep her horrifying reflection from frightening the young woman. But what's more frightening is the blank, white mask Christiane is forced to wear.

Georges Franju is mainly known for this stunning and chilling piece of lyrical horror aBlood of the Beasts, about a Paris slaughterhouse, that acted as a prelude to the horrors witnessed in Eyes Without a Face, his first feature length film.

nd one look at his filmography will show the trajectory towards this point in his career. Franju began making documentaries commissioned by the French government, covering such subjects as the Nazi Occupation of France during the second World War and films about the industrialization of France as a nation. But it was his first documentary,

Franju was interested in the fantastique, a genre that lent literary and cinematic influences to horror and science fiction films. Films from this area blend together elements of the supernatural with mundane events. Franju said of his early films, "I'm led to give my documentary realism the appearance of fiction." It's by no accident that Franju chose to intercut scenes of animals being butchered with scenes of children playing on the streets.  But based on the news bullet at the beginning of this piece, are the events in Eyes Without a Face all that fantastic, or merely just an area of horrific events and science yet to be realized?

Dr. Genessier works as a physician in a clinic by day and a mad scientist by night, the medical lab in the lower half of his house a substitute for the Paris slaughterhouses in Blood of the Beasts. Genessier is heartbroken over his mistake that absconded his daughter's beauty. But like any good father, he aims to make it up to her by reconstructing her face back to her original condition. And if it means stealing the face of another, then so be it.

Any lesser horror film would write Genessier off as a monster by his actions, but this film gives the doctor a more human side, thanks to the writing talent of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narceja, who were coming off the successes of another French chiller, Henri-Georges Clouzet's Diabolique, and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Genessier is no monster; there is a scene where Genessier gently cares for a child in his clinic, and, in fact, it is this scene along with his devotion to Christiane that forces the viewer to identify with him on some level. But in that love for his daughter, what's sacrificed more than just the innocent lives of women, is the relationship between he and Christiane.

The doctor performs what is known as the heterograft, connecting the skin back onto the face of his daughter. We learn that his assistant, Louise, was his only successful face transplant procedure and now with the operation on his daughter, he has many reserves as to whether this surgery was a success. Christiane is disappointed as her body begins to slowly reject the graft.

Christiane is forced to spend the rest of her days in her room, locked away like the caged dogs her father keeps in the back part of the house. Before her terrible accident, Christiane was to marry Jacques, a young doctor who works with Dr. Genessier at the clinic. After her mock funeral (where one of the faceless victims was the stand-in body), Christiane has strict orders from her father not to have any contact with the outside world - especially with her fiance.

Even with the chilling surgery scenes, Eyes Without a Face is different than many horror films of the time. The movie is more sad than scary, pulling at the heartstrings - and maybe even a little tissue fiber - and it the loss of love within Christiane than the loss of her face that the audience identifies with.

There is a scene where Christine calls Jacques at the clinic. He answers, and, for a moment, Christiane quietly listens to his voice over the phone before hanging up. She calls back again another day, same scenario, but this time Christiane whispers Jacques' name into the phone, and he hears her. He recognizes the voice and says her name before hearing the click of the telephone.


It is the performance of Edith Scob as Christiane that carries the emotional weight. Franju said of Scob: "She is a magic person. She gives the unreal reality." The actress' face is never seen throughout the film, and it is the shiny white mask, like a porcelain doll, that offers a blank slate for the viewer to project any emotion they feel onto it. But it is Scob, with her slight head turns and the way she places her arms by her side in her satin nightgown, that make her seem as if she is an apparition floating up and down the stairs in the house. But it is in her eyes, the eyes of the title, that express more than any face could.

Eyes Without a Face was controversial when it was released in 1959 for its graphic scenes of gore and a subject matter audiences weren't quite familiar with at the time. French critics were appalled that a film like this could be considered a French horror film, and English audiences fainted during the heterograft scene, in which Franju responded, "Now  I know why Scotsmen wear skirts." The film was released in America the following year under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus on a double-bill with another low-budget horror movie, essentially diminishing any poetic or artistic reverence.

With her father completely consumed in his work, Christiane is left alone again to wait on the third floor in her room. Christiane wanders through the house, down to the basement and into her father's lab where she sees a woman strapped to bed that resembles herself before the accident. She becomes aware of her father's intentions and walks out of the house and vanishes into a darkened forest. And the audience is left to wonder if she'll wander the Earth alone forever.