Skin Deep Nightmares: Identity’s Facade in Two Visions of Body Horror

Two films peel back the layers of humanity, one with a surgeon’s blade, the other with an extraterrestrial hunger, questioning what lies beneath the surface.

Body horror thrives on the violation of flesh and self, and few films capture this dread more profoundly than Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013). Both works confront the fragility of identity through visceral transformations, yet they emerge from distinct eras and sensibilities: Franju’s poetic surrealism rooted in post-war French cinema, and Glazer’s stark, minimalist sci-fi alienation. This comparison unearths their shared obsessions with masks, impersonation, and the grotesque reconfiguration of the body.

  • Both films use the face as a battleground for identity, transforming it from protector to prison.
  • They innovate body horror through surgical precision and predatory consumption, influencing generations of genre filmmakers.
  • At their core lies a meditation on otherness, where human form becomes both lure and trap.

The Surgical Veil: Origins of Facial Terror

In Eyes Without a Face, director Georges Franju crafts a nightmare from medical hubris. The story centres on Dr. Olivier Génessier, a renowned surgeon whose daughter Christiane suffers a disfiguring car accident for which he bears indirect responsibility. Obsessed with restoring her beauty, Génessier orchestrates a series of kidnappings, surgically peeling the faces from young women to graft onto Christiane. The film’s opening sequence sets a tone of clinical detachment: a nighttime abduction, a scalpel’s glide across flesh, and the disposal of a ravaged visage in a sink, blood swirling like abstract art. Franju’s black-and-white cinematography, handled by Eugen Schüfftan, emphasises shadows and stark contrasts, turning the operating theatre into a chamber of ritualistic horror.

Christiane, portrayed with haunting fragility by Edith Scob, embodies the erasure of self. Masked in a featureless white visage designed by Franju himself, she drifts through the Génessier clinic like a spectre, her eyes piercing the void. This mask is no mere prop; it symbolises the loss of identity, a porcelain shell that both conceals and reveals her inner torment. As Christiane releases caged dogs in the climax, symbolising her rebellion against her father’s paternalistic control, the film pivots from passive victimhood to active agency, her gloved hands wielding freedom through destruction.

Contrast this with Under the Skin, where identity is not stolen but mimicked. Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed alien assumes human form, seducing Glaswegian men into a void-like chamber where their bodies dissolve, leaving skins to be worn like suits. Glazer’s narrative unfolds through long, unbroken takes, often using hidden cameras to capture real pedestrians’ obliviousness. The alien’s face, a perfect facsimile of Johansson’s, becomes a tool of predation, yet cracks appear: a moment of hesitation before a deformed man, a tear shed over a drowning family. Here, body horror emerges from inversion; the invader questions her own husk as it fails to fully impersonate humanity.

Both films deploy the face as identity’s fragile anchor. In Franju’s world, the face is harvested for restoration, a desperate bid to reclaim wholeness. Glazer flips this: the face is a disposable costume, shed when empathy intrudes. These parallels highlight body horror’s evolution from gothic medical ethics to postmodern existential drift.

Predatory Harvests: The Mechanics of Flesh

Body horror demands tactile revulsion, and Eyes Without a Face achieves it through restrained elegance. The surgical scenes, influenced by surrealists like Buñuel, avoid gore for implication: gloved hands wield scalpels with balletic precision, faces lifted like veils. No blood sprays; instead, Franju lingers on textures – the gleam of surgical steel, the pallor of exposed muscle. This subtlety amplifies dread, drawing from real heterotopic transplant fears of the era, when facial surgery was nascent and ethically fraught. Production notes reveal Franju shot these sequences in actual clinics, lending authenticity that unsettled censors, leading to bans in Britain and cuts elsewhere.

Under the Skin escalates to abstraction. Men’s entrapment in the black pool defies physics: bodies stripped to sinew, floating in inky suspension, harvested by a motorcyclist companion (a nod to THX 1138‘s dystopian chases). Practical effects by the Infinite Studios team create a latex nightmare, flesh rendered as industrial byproduct. Mica Levi’s score, a droning violin cacophony, underscores the process, evoking insectile violation. Glazer’s direction insists on duration; viewers witness dissolution in real time, mirroring the alien’s growing disquiet.

Special effects sections in both merit scrutiny. Franju eschewed prosthetics for masks and matte work, pioneering subtle integration that influenced The Skin I Live In by Almodóvar. Glazer’s VFX blend seamlessly with documentary-style footage, erasing seams between real and uncanny. These techniques serve thematic ends: in Eyes, effects humanise monstrosity; in Skin, they dehumanise it.

Production challenges deepened their impact. Franju battled French producers wary of horror’s sensationalism, while Glazer endured three years of reshoots, Scarlett’s immersion in Glasgow’s underbelly forging her performance. Both films’ low budgets – Eyes at under 300,000 francs, Skin at $13 million – forced ingenuity, birthing timeless visuals.

Mirrors of Otherness: Identity’s Fractured Gaze

Identity fractures under scrutiny in these narratives. Christiane’s mask enforces isolation, her father’s experiments a metaphor for patriarchal overreach, echoing post-war French anxieties over science’s abuses – think Vichy collaborations or atomic shadows. She navigates a world of mirrors, each reflection a reminder of absence, culminating in her nocturnal wanderings where pigeons perch unafraid, sensing her altered essence.

The alien in Under the Skin confronts otherness externally then internally. Initial hunts are mechanical, but encounters with vulnerability – a dying man’s family, a log fire’s warmth – erode her facade. Johansson’s minimalism conveys this: lips parting in confusion, eyes widening at sensation. Glazer draws from Michel Faber’s novel, but amplifies cosmic loneliness, positioning the alien as refugee in human skin, her final stripping a raw assertion of true form.

Gender dynamics sharpen the horror. Both protagonists wield allure as weapon or defence: Christiane’s beauty pre-accident lured victims indirectly; the alien’s sexuality traps prey. Yet victimhood reverses: women become agents of disruption. Psychoanalytic readings see Christiane as Lacan’s fragmented subject, mask embodying the Imaginary’s failure; the alien as Real intruding on Symbolic order.

Class and nationality infuse texture. Génessier’s bourgeois clinic contrasts victims’ anonymity; Glasgow’s working-class men, immigrants, highlight predation’s social strata. These layers elevate personal horror to cultural critique.

Echoes in the Canon: Legacy and Subgenre Shifts

Eyes Without a Face birthed the face-transplant subgenre, inspiring Face/Off and The Face of Another. Its influence permeates Italian giallo and Pedro Almodóvar’s surgical obsessions. Franju’s fusion of documentary realism (from Blood of the Beasts) with poetic dread redefined horror’s artistry.

Under the Skin bridges arthouse and genre, echoing Videodrome‘s flesh invasions while prefiguring Annihilation‘s alien metamorphoses. Its legacy lies in hypnotic pacing, proving slow cinema’s horror potency. Together, they trace body horror from 1960s ethical qualms to 2010s identity crises amid globalisation and digital avatars.

Sound design amplifies unease. Franju’s sparse score yields to ambient dread; Levi’s strings in Skin mimic alien perception, distorting human voices into menace. Cinematography – Schüfftan’s gothic frames versus Daniel Landin’s desaturated Glaswegians – captures isolation’s palette.

Performances anchor abstraction. Brasseur’s Génessier blends charisma with fanaticism; Scob’s silent eloquence haunts. Johansson subverts stardom, her alien a void within glamour; the motorcyclist’s mute efficiency (Jeremy McWilliams) evokes archetypal hunters.

Director in the Spotlight

Georges Franju, born in 1912 in Fougères, France, emerged as a pivotal figure bridging documentary and narrative cinema. Raised in a modest Catholic family, he developed an early fascination with the macabre, influenced by fairground spectacles and Louis Feuillade’s serials like Fantômas. In 1932, alongside Henri Langlois, he co-founded the Cinémathèque Française, preserving film heritage amid Nazi occupation threats. This archival zeal shaped his aesthetic: a reverence for cinema’s shadows and forgotten forms.

Franju’s directorial debut came with shorts like Le Sang des bêtes (1949), a stark documentary on Parisian abattoirs that blended poetry with brutality, earning international acclaim and Cannes prizes. Transitioning to features, The Sin of Father Mouret (1950) adapted Émile Zola with lyrical surrealism. His horror pinnacle, Eyes Without a Face (1960), stunned festivals, its masked elegance masking profound humanism.

Franju’s career spanned 20 features and dozens of shorts. Key works include Judex (1963), a vibrant remake of Feuillade’s vigilante tale starring Channing Pollock as the caped avenger; Thomas l’imposteur (1965), a WWI espionage drama with Emmanuelle Riva; Les Rideaux blancs (1964), exploring hospital ethics post-Eyes; La Faute des autres (1968), a psychological drama; and Nuits rouges (1974), blending thriller with occult mystery. Influences from Cocteau and Méliès permeated his oeuvre, marked by dream logic and social critique. Later years saw TV work and activism against censorship. Franju died in 1987, leaving a legacy of 50+ shorts like Hotel des Invalides (1952) and Le Grand Méliès (1952), cementing his role in French New Wave peripheries.

Awards included BAFTA nominations and lifetime tributes; his films screened at Venice and Locarno. Franju’s humanism – pity amid horror – endures, influencing David Cronenberg and contemporary surrealists.

Actor in the Spotlight

Scarlett Johansson, born November 22, 1984, in New York City to a Danish-Jewish mother and African-American/Polish father, rose from child actor to global icon. Her early life in Manhattan’s bustle honed resilience; at nine, she debuted in North (1994), followed by Just Cause (1995). Breakthrough came with The Horse Whisperer (1998), Robert Redford’s equine drama showcasing her poise.

Adolescence brought Ghost World (2001), her indie hit as alienated teen Enid, earning Gotham nods. Lost in Translation (2003) opposite Bill Murray won BAFTA and MTV awards, cementing dramatic chops. Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) evoked Vermeer’s muse; Match Point (2005) Woody Allen’s muse solidified A-list status.

Blockbuster era: Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (2010), spawning MCU billions across The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Civil War (2016), Infinity War (2018), Endgame (2019), and solo Black Widow (2021). Indies persisted: Under the Skin (2013), her transformative alien; Her (2013) as vocal OS; Lucy (2014) Luc Besson’s hyperkinetic thriller; Marriage Story (2019) earning Oscar noms; Jojo Rabbit (2019) Taika Waititi satire.

Awards abound: two-time Oscar nominee, three Globes, SAG wins. Filmography exceeds 50: The Island (2005) sci-fi; The Prestige (2006) Nolan ensemble; Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008); We Bought a Zoo (2011); Chef (2014); Sing (2016) voice; Rough Night (2017) comedy; Knives Out (2019); Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) cameo. Producing via These Pictures, she champions female stories. Johansson’s range – vulnerability masked by strength – defines her, from Under the Skin‘s enigma to superheroine.

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