The lab and the woods: science and myth in Les Yeux sans visage

Abstract

With its blend of modern sf and mythic horror, Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes without a Face; France/Italy 1959) rivals not only the greatest variations on the Frankenstein theme but also the best of speculative film. However, almost five decades after its release, it remains generally unknown in the US, where it was circulated in a badly dubbed and miscut version and attracted a cult following under the ridiculous title The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus. Fortunately, an international re-release in 1995 made the original film available for Anglophone critical attention, and in 2004 it was finally given a clean DVD release by Criterion, confirming its status as a transgenre European masterpiece. Thus, over the last decade, Les Yeux has found a place within scholarship, much of it perceptively justifying the film's niche in the cinematic pantheon by focusing on the psychological and historical implications of the horror within its narrative.1 But what draws my attention to Les Yeux is the astounding force of its vision, which sees through the fabrications of both science and mythology with equal directness. For Franju's film castigates both the modern obsession with science as a means of defying nature and the mythic invocation of lyricism in the inevitability of death. In so doing, this film evokes within its audience a kind of grand despair seldom felt in cinematic art. Today, Les Yeux remains fundamentally disturbing, a solemn, awesome revelation.An important figure in the history of French cinema, Georges Franju (1912-1987) co-founded, with Henri Langlois, the celebrated archival arthouse known as La Cinematheque Francaise in 1936. He worked tirelessly for the recognition of serious film throughout his life, but his own creative work was never really acknowledged for its achievements. It may be that his vision - the unique nature of which was clearly revealed in his first notable film, Le Sang des betes (Blood of the Beasts; France 1949)2 - was simply more than most audiences could accept. Images in this documentary quietly silhouette the cinematically enhanced beauty of post-war Paris, the simple joy of its children at play, the quiet dignity of the city's manual labourers - and the efficient butchery of the Parisian slaughterhouse in which they work. Watching men kill calves and sheep, one is grateful for the black-and-white photography, lilting music and quiet shots of the pleasant world outside the abattoir - the fantasy of harmony that shelters the mind from the facts of the food chain. Coalescing, food chain and harmony create the contradictory truth of life, and in Franju's own words, 'only the truth matters' ('Franju le visionnaire').3 Franju deliberately chose to shoot in black and white, hoping for an aesthetic response from his audience, since to have to see what he shows in colour would have been 'repulsive' ('Franju le visionnaire'). Here, at the core of this early rehearsal for Les Yeux, is Franju's determination to make us see, and ten years later he redirects our vision from the truth of animal meat to the truth of human flesh. In both cases, horror is not without beauty and beauty cannot deny horror. To ignore either or to pretend that the one can preclude the other is to close one's eyes to truth.But which part of the truth has more value? Which runs deeper - the science of the abattoir, so necessary to feed humanity, or the mythology of the harmonic universe, seemingly intrinsic to the human imagination? At the centre of Franju's artistic vision is this impossible question: is the truth of science more or less valid than the truth of myth? Jack P. Rawlins defines fantasy and sf as the aesthetic genres that best illustrate the antipodal beliefs within scientific and mythic perspectives. In fantasy, reason cuts us off from the instinctive wisdom of the irrational. In sf, reason liberates us from the narrowness of our humanity. So fantasy and sf, inseparable companions though they may be, are more than different: they are natural enemies (168). …