Flick Pick

At first glance, it seems odd that French surrealist filmmaker Georges Franju began as a documentarian. But his non-fiction visit to a slaughterhouse (Le Sang des Betes, 1949) and his grim look at World War I relics (Hotel des Invalides, 1951) set the stage, in their way, for his later fictional films, in which he characteristically juxtaposed the macabre and the ordinary while keeping his emotional distance from both. Franju's most renowned work, at least among horror-movie cultists, has to be Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face), which he made in 1959. It was released in this country as The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

Related Content

• It's official: Bob Dylan has no integrity
  November 10, 2011
• Ten most memorable celebrity and notables mug shots of 2011
  December 16, 2011
• Five films not to miss at Mile High Horror Film Festival
  October 6, 2011
• Gratuitous randomness: Birds with arms
  August 3, 2011
• Yard House will open in Lone Tree -- after it fills 200 positions
  May 15, 2012

More About

• Georges Franju
• Pierre Brasseur
• Nicolas Cage
• John Travolta
• Tivoli

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Relentlessly creepy and vividly stylized, it's the tale of a distinguished (but crazed) surgeon and researcher (Pierre Brasseur) who kidnaps a string of young women because he means to graft their features onto the face of his daughter, who has been horribly disfigured in an automobile accident. Salted with allegory and steeped in baroque imagery, Les Yeux is justly famous for its dark thrills, and it has been widely imitated and borrowed from, most recently in the inventive John Travolta/Nicolas Cage vehicle Face/Off.

Franju's gripping little classic opens Friday, December 26, at the Starz FilmCenter at the Tivoli; it runs through January 1. For information and showtimes, call 303-820-3456.