Two masterpieces of flesh and facade, where the skin we wear hides horrors beneath.
Body horror thrives on the violation of the human form, peeling back layers of skin and identity to expose raw vulnerability. Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) exemplify this subgenre at its most poetic and perturbing. Both films centre on feminine figures grappling with monstrous transformations, using the face and skin as battlegrounds for alienation and desire. This comparison uncovers their shared obsessions with beauty, otherness, and the grotesque, revealing how classic surgical dread evolves into modern existential unease.
- How both films weaponise the face as a mask of humanity, blending surgical precision with alien detachment.
- Explorations of gender, predation, and identity through contrasting cinematographic languages.
- Their enduring legacies in body horror, from poetic surrealism to stark minimalism.
Flesh Unveiled: Dissecting Body Horror in Eyes Without a Face and Under the Skin
The Masked Muse: Christiane’s Silent Agony
In Eyes Without a Face, Georges Franju crafts a tale of paternal hubris and filial torment. Dr. Louis Génessier, portrayed with chilling charisma by Pierre Brasseur, is a renowned surgeon whose daughter Christiane (Édith Scob) suffers disfigurement from a car accident he caused. Cloaked in a pristine white mask that evokes both medical sterility and ghostly pallor, Christiane drifts through her father’s opulent villa like a spectre. The narrative unfolds with methodical cruelty: Génessier and his devoted assistant Louise (Alida Valli) kidnap young women, anaesthetise them in a moonlit operating theatre, and surgically harvest their facial skin for grafts onto Christiane. These procedures fail repeatedly, leaving her visage a perpetual ruin beneath the mask.
Franju’s synopsis lingers on the minutiae of violation. One pivotal sequence shows the scalpel gliding across a victim’s cheek, the camera lingering on the glistening separation of dermis from muscle. Christiane’s moral awakening propels the climax; she liberates the caged dogs her father experiments on and unleashes doves as symbols of fleeting purity before slashing his face in mercy. The film’s black-and-white cinematography, courtesy of Eugen Schüfftan, bathes these acts in silvery moonlight, transforming gore into balletic poetry. Produced on a modest budget amid France’s post-war cinematic renaissance, Eyes Without a Face drew from real medical scandals like the 1930s ‘docteur Petiot’ murders, infusing authenticity into its fever dream.
Christiane embodies the film’s core tension: her masked existence questions whether identity resides in flesh or spirit. Scob’s performance, all wide-eyed restraint and veiled sorrow, amplifies this. Franju, influenced by surrealists like Buñuel, eschews jump scares for hypnotic dread, making the body a canvas for existential revolt.
Alien Allure: The Seductress Sheds Her Skin
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin transplants body horror into sci-fi terrain, following an extraterrestrial entity (Scarlett Johansson) who prowls Glasgow’s rainy streets in a white van. Disguised in human form, she lures isolated men to a void-like black chamber where they sink into an oily abyss, their bodies harvested for meat while their skins are worn by her kind. The plot accelerates when curiosity disrupts her routine: after sparing a swimmer and witnessing human intimacy, her facade cracks. Pursued by a fellow alien, she flees into the wilderness, her synthetic body disintegrating in a grotesque symphony of failure.
Glazer’s narrative, loosely adapted from Michel Faber’s 2000 novel, prioritises sensory immersion over exposition. Key scenes unfold in near silence: men strip methodically in the void, their submerged forms convulsing as flesh peels away in abstract horror. Mica Levi’s screeching violin score underscores the alienation, mimicking insectile unease. Johansson’s character, unnamed and inscrutable, devours with mechanical seduction, her Glaswegian accent a thin veneer over cosmic indifference. Production involved hidden cameras capturing real pedestrian interactions, lending documentary verisimilitude to the uncanny.
The film’s body horror peaks in the forest sequence, where loggers assault the alien, raping her form which collapses into a pulpy skeleton, cake-like innards spilling forth. This reversal of predation highlights vulnerability beneath the predator’s guise. Glazer, drawing from Kubrick’s The Shining and Lynch’s dream logic, crafts a portrait of otherness where humanity is the true monstrosity.
Scalpel and Void: Techniques of Transgression
Both films master the slow reveal, turning the body into a site of philosophical inquiry. Franju’s surgical theatre, with its art deco sterility and anatomical models, contrasts Glazer’s minimalist void, yet both spaces strip victims bare. In Eyes Without a Face, the graft scenes employ practical effects: latex prosthetics and real surgical footage evoke 1950s transplant anxieties post-World War II ethics debates. Glazer opts for digital compositing and body doubles, the alien’s shedding skin a seamless blend of prosthetics and CGI, evoking post-human fragmentation in the digital age.
Sound design amplifies corporeal dread. Franju’s sparse score by Maurice Jarre uses piano motifs for melancholy, punctuated by the whine of surgical tools. Levi’s Under the Skin soundtrack, lauded at festivals, layers dissonant strings to mimic bodily invasion, as if cells scream in protest. These auditory assaults mirror thematic parallels: both narratives probe beauty’s tyranny, where Christiane’s quest for a ‘normal’ face parallels the alien’s doomed mimicry of human allure.
Class politics simmer beneath. Génessier’s elite villa exploits working-class women, echoing France’s post-colonial guilt. The alien preys on Scotland’s marginalised men, inverting immigrant anxieties in Brexit-era Britain. Gender dynamics sharpen the blade: women as victims in Franju, men as prey in Glazer, yet both centralise female forms resisting imposed identities.
Visages of the Other: Identity and the Gaze
The face anchors both horrors. Christiane’s mask, designed by Franju’s wife after Kabuki influences, symbolises veiled trauma, her unmasking a moment of sublime rejection. Johansson’s alien wears her skin like ill-fitting couture, her blank stare betraying the void within. Psychoanalytic readings abound: Christiane as Lacan’s fragmented subject, the alien as Žižek’s obscene underside of ideology.
Cinematography diverges yet converges. Schüfftan’s deep focus captures villa shadows, evoking German Expressionism. Daniel Landin’s wide lenses in Under the Skin distort human proportions, fish-eye views underscoring alienation. Both directors favour long takes, Franju’s balletic choreography meeting Glazer’s static menace.
Influence ripples outward. Franju’s film inspired The Skin I Live In by Almodóvar, its surgical motifs echoed in Cronenberg’s oeuvre. Glazer’s work prefigures Annihilation‘s mutating forms, cementing body horror’s evolution from physical to ontological.
Predators and Prey: Gendered Gazes Reversed
Predation inverts traditional gazes. Génessier objectifies women for restoration, his gaze paternalistic yet eroticised. The alien’s predatory stare commodifies male bodies, subverting scopophilia. Both films critique beauty standards: Christiane’s ruined face indicts vanity, the alien’s flawless form exposes superficiality.
Performances elevate these reversals. Scob’s mute expressivity conveys inner turmoil, Brasseur’s suave villainy humanises monstrosity. Johansson, shedding Marvel gloss, delivers affectless menace, her vulnerability in the climax raw and revelatory.
Production hurdles underscore commitments. Franju battled censors, the UK banning it until 1986 for ‘repulsiveness’. Glazer endured five years of post-production, Levi composing blind from script descriptions.
Legacy of the Lie: Cultural Echoes
These films endure as touchstones. Franju’s poetic restraint influenced New French Extremity; Glazer’s minimalism echoes slow cinema’s dread. Together, they map body horror’s arc from 1960s humanism to 2010s posthumanism, questioning what lies beneath our skins.
Their myths persist: rumours of real transplants in Franju’s effects, Glazer’s ‘haunted’ set. Yet facts ground their power: both rooted in era-specific fears, from organ shortages to AI anxieties.
Special Effects: From Latex to Layers
Effects sections merit dissection. Franju’s practical grafts used pig intestines for realism, supervised by medical consultants. Glazer’s team, led by Nick Brooks, crafted the alien’s innards from silicone and corn syrup, filmed in reverse for shedding illusions. These techniques not only horrify but philosophise: flesh as mutable, identity illusory.
Director in the Spotlight
Georges Franju, born in 1912 in Fougères, France, emerged from a family of artisans, his father a metalworker who instilled a fascination with machinery and the body. Self-taught in cinema, Franju co-founded the Cinématheque Française in 1936 with Henri Langlois, curating avant-garde films that shaped his surrealist sensibilities. Influences ranged from Méliès’ illusions to Cocteau’s poetry, blending documentary precision with fantasy. His directorial debut, Le Sang des bêtes (1949), a stark slaughterhouse exposé, shocked audiences and established his corporeal obsessions.
Franju’s career peaked in the 1950s-60s, navigating France’s cinematic nouvelle vague peripherally. Key works include The Keepers of the Night (La Tête contre les murs, 1958), a prison drama critiquing institutional madness; Judex (1963), a stylish Feuillade homage; and Nuits Rouges (1974), a fantastical spy thriller. Eyes Without a Face remains his masterpiece, blending horror with humanism. Later films like Thomas l’imposteur (1965) explored war’s absurdities. Franju directed over 20 features and shorts, plus documentaries on Picasso and Goya, retiring in 1980 amid health issues. He died in 1987, leaving a legacy of poetic unease influencing Jodorowsky and Argento. Awards included the Prix Louis-Delluc for Eyes, cementing his status as horror’s impressionist.
Jonathan Glazer, born 1965 in London to Jewish parents, studied theatre design at Nottingham Trent University before NFTS filmmaking. Early commercials for Guinness and Levi’s showcased his visual flair, leading to Sexy Beast (2000), a stylish crime debut earning Ben Kingsley an Oscar nod. Influences include Kubrick’s precision and Tarkovsky’s metaphysics.
Glazer’s oeuvre is sparse yet impactful: Birth (2004) probed grief with Nicole Kidman; Under the Skin redefined sci-fi horror. His 2013 Channel 4 ad Liberty controversially featured an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Documentaries like Israel and the Palestinians: A Warning to the West (2023) reflect political engagement. Upcoming projects include a Birdeye adaptation. With four features, Glazer commands auteur reverence, his slow-burn style earning BAFTA nods and festival acclaim.
Actor in the Spotlight
Scarlett Johansson, born 22 November 1984 in New York City to a Danish-Jewish mother and New York-born father, displayed precocity early, modelling and acting from age eight. Breakthrough came with Lost in Translation (2003), Sofia Coppola’s melancholic gem earning her BAFTA and MTV nods. Typecast briefly as ingenue, she pivoted to action as Black Widow in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 (2010), anchoring 10 films grossing billions.
Johansson’s range shines in indies: Match Point (2005) opposite Rhys-Meyers; Her (2013) as ethereal OS; Under the Skin, her body horror triumph. Comedies like Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and Marriage Story (2019), netting Oscar/BAFTA noms, showcase dramatic depth. Voice work includes The Jungle Book (2016 remake). Activism spans Planned Parenthood board, #TimesUp, and Rub & Tug trans role controversy.
Filmography spans 60+ credits: Ghost World (2001), quirky debut; The Prestige (2006), Nolan illusion; Lucy (2014), sci-fi spectacle; Jojo Rabbit (2019), Taika Waititi satire; Black Widow (2021) solo MCU. Awards include Tony for A View from the Bridge (2010), two Saturns. Producing via These Pictures, she champions female stories, embodying modern versatility.
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