The shockingly clinical views of face-grafting surgery here represent but one
facet of what makes this a still terribly unsettling film. Director Georges
Franju took a Grand Guignol conceit -- a once-famed doctor goes off the rails
experimenting ... more on young women, so as to restore the beauty of his now-disfigured
innocent daughter -- and imbued it not just with surrealist poetry, but with a
real-world immediacy and (and here's what distinguishes it from so many films of
its ilk) a genuine empathy for the madman's victims, coexisting with a certain
sympathy for his lunatic mission. The depth of the contradictory emotions the
film evokes is complemented by its strange nightmare imagery, and all the actors
(Pierre Brasseur as the doctor; Alida Valli, in her first horror
role, as his steely, devoted assistant; and Edith Scob as the daughter) are
absolutely unimpeachable in their portrayals.
