Bone Clinic Whiteness
LES YEUX SANS VISAGE - George Franju
Masks
One of the key motifs in this film is that of whitewashing, blankness, stripping down. Christiane is doubly stripped of her features, once through the horrific car accident that leaves her face ravaged and featureless and once through the blank white mask that her father complels her to wear. The evenness of the mask gives an impression of symmetry that is pleasing enough to be taken for beauty, it's blank perfection easy on the eye. At several points in the film the mask is cast aside by Christiane and forced back upon her by her father and Louise her father's acolyte and lover, they become desperate to repress the horror of Christiane's face and what it represents. Faceless, voiceless and even nameless ( her father having identified the corpse of a girl he murdered as the remains of his dead daughter) she becomes the perfect fairytale heroine/victim. Masked, silenced and declared dead her days are spent haunting labyrinthine corridors in diaphanous nightgowns, expressionless and mute.
In Greek drama there is a vibrant physicality demanded of masked actors to compensate for the lack of facial expression. In this film Christiane remains mute and motionless for much of the film, yet the mere fact of her presence in a room alters the tone of a scene. In the operating theatre she peers at the girl whose face is being sliced off by her father much as a child might watch the death of an insect, with detached fascination. Christiane's mask protects the viewer from making a decision as to her true feelings, and it is this ambiguity which is most unsettling. In the operating theatre Genassier, Christiane's father, also wears a white mask that leaves him as unexposed as Christiane, perhaps they share a single expression during this scene beneath their masks? It seems interesting that Genessier decides that he has ruined Christiane's life by taking away her beauty, that she is worthless until he can replace that beauty be it with the face of a dead girl, or a mask that he has made from plaster. Finally Christiane rejects his offer of help , freeing his latest victim and allowing him to be killed by his own tortured dogs. As she walks away she knows that without him there will be no new face to make her beautiful.It becomes apparent that a new face is merely a means to assuage the intolerable guilt Genessier feels and it is his guilt and cruelty that has made her so unhappy. As a symbol of her new found peace, Christiane leaves her prison with doves on both shoulders, one hand raised up as if to finally tear off her mask.
Masks
One of the key motifs in this film is that of whitewashing, blankness, stripping down. Christiane is doubly stripped of her features, once through the horrific car accident that leaves her face ravaged and featureless and once through the blank white mask that her father complels her to wear. The evenness of the mask gives an impression of symmetry that is pleasing enough to be taken for beauty, it's blank perfection easy on the eye. At several points in the film the mask is cast aside by Christiane and forced back upon her by her father and Louise her father's acolyte and lover, they become desperate to repress the horror of Christiane's face and what it represents. Faceless, voiceless and even nameless ( her father having identified the corpse of a girl he murdered as the remains of his dead daughter) she becomes the perfect fairytale heroine/victim. Masked, silenced and declared dead her days are spent haunting labyrinthine corridors in diaphanous nightgowns, expressionless and mute.
In Greek drama there is a vibrant physicality demanded of masked actors to compensate for the lack of facial expression. In this film Christiane remains mute and motionless for much of the film, yet the mere fact of her presence in a room alters the tone of a scene. In the operating theatre she peers at the girl whose face is being sliced off by her father much as a child might watch the death of an insect, with detached fascination. Christiane's mask protects the viewer from making a decision as to her true feelings, and it is this ambiguity which is most unsettling. In the operating theatre Genassier, Christiane's father, also wears a white mask that leaves him as unexposed as Christiane, perhaps they share a single expression during this scene beneath their masks? It seems interesting that Genessier decides that he has ruined Christiane's life by taking away her beauty, that she is worthless until he can replace that beauty be it with the face of a dead girl, or a mask that he has made from plaster. Finally Christiane rejects his offer of help , freeing his latest victim and allowing him to be killed by his own tortured dogs. As she walks away she knows that without him there will be no new face to make her beautiful.It becomes apparent that a new face is merely a means to assuage the intolerable guilt Genessier feels and it is his guilt and cruelty that has made her so unhappy. As a symbol of her new found peace, Christiane leaves her prison with doves on both shoulders, one hand raised up as if to finally tear off her mask.