Edgar Wright Hails This French Movie as One of the Greatest Horror Films Ever!

The superiority of physical media, especially UHD 4K, over streaming cannot be overstated. However, physical discs have been facing a decline for years due to the rise of streaming platforms and a general trend towards digitalization. Prominent filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Guillermo del Toro, and Edgar Wright are staunch supporters of physical media.

Wright, who is soon returning to the big screen with a new version of Running Man, is not just a cinephile but also an extraordinary collector, owning thousands of films in his library.

In 2011, he shared his top 10 favorite films with the renowned Criterion Collection (of which he likely owns nearly the entire catalog). His list included three French films, all masterpieces. One of these, he believes, is perhaps the greatest horror film ever made: Eyes Without a Face by George Franju.

“I’ve Been Obsessed with Horror from a Young Age”

“I’ve been obsessed with horror from a young age,” he explains. “Knowing this, my father often described the best horror movie he had ever seen. It was a black-and-white French film, which he described as ‘really, really gory.'”

“He told me it was about a mad surgeon trying to restore his daughter’s face after she was disfigured in a car accident, by mutilating young women and stealing their beautiful skin. He kept telling me how amazing the film was, how terrifying it was, and that I absolutely had to see it. But…

He couldn’t remember the film’s title. I tried researching in horror film guides at the library, but without the internet and specific plot keywords, I was stuck for a long time.”

“Years later, I watched Eyes Without a Face and immediately called my dad. I gave him the crucial piece of information he was missing, the exact title of the best horror film he had ever seen. I agreed with him that it was indeed an extraordinary film.”

Faceless Horror, the Face of Horror

In Eyes Without a Face, the unfortunate Christiane Genessier, disfigured after a car accident, is subjected to her father’s gruesome attempts to restore her beauty. Her father, a highly respected surgeon (played by Pierre Brasseur), resorts to skin grafts harvested from young girls.

In this horror masterpiece by Georges Franju, Edith Scob wears a terrifying mask, expressionless, lifeless, and silent. It’s perhaps an early instance of what would later be known as the Uncanny Valley effect.

The term “Uncanny,” a translation of the Freudian term “unheimlich,” refers to “the uncanny,” a scientific theory by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. First published in 1970, it suggests that the more a humanoid robot resembles a human, the more its imperfections appear monstrous.

Behind the mask’s story, Henri Assola and Georges Klein were responsible. This duo had previously created the Quasimodo mask worn by Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. For a long time, masks were made from plastic, rubber tree sap imported from Great Britain.

However, French chemists had just developed a more efficient method. Now, latex masks were cast from plaster molds that replicated the performers’ faces. This manufacturing detail is crucial: it shows Franju’s intention to make Christiane’s mask a second face, one that must compete in beauty with the real one.

“The moment one can see the horror in a film like this, because it is fundamentally a horror film, the moment one can see what is terrible, even grotesque and poetic in the reality it expresses, that is, in the everyday reality close to us, then I have achieved my goal,” said George Franju about his remarkable film.

Interested in discovering this gem of the genre? It is available on DVD/Blu-ray, VOD, and even streaming.