A Criteron movie that I had put off for a long time. It made a list of the top ten Criterion gross-outs, and I remember reading something about how explicit this movie was in the surgical scenes. Contrary to that description, it's not actually that powerful.
It's a French production from 1960. It's well directed, with some really nicely framed shots. Not exceptionally well done, but it's pretty evocative.
What makes the movie work is the mask that the daughter wears. It's effectively a cast of her own face, but with holes for the eyes, nose, and a little slit for the mouth. It's creepy, mostly because the movie is shot in black and white, and the mask looks eerily close to her normal face. We don't get to see her disfigured face for most of the movie, either. We finally get a reveal of it during the last act. It's a little anti-climactic.
The next notable element is the performance of her father, the surgeon. Most of the movie, he's just a uniformly awkward guy. The scene that really brings him out is when we see him working at the hospital. He's awkward around the girl that he wants to abduct as a skin donor, but then we see him interacting with a young male patient, and he seems to be entirely normal. I kept thinking about how this movie would be made in modern times, and the approach to an unstable villain tends to be more over-the-top now. His weirdness, mostly restrained, is really pleasing.
The surgical sequence is also pretty restrained. There's some blood, not much, but there is a very clinical feel to the scene.
One shot that stood out is when the camera looks down the body of a girl who has jumped from the window, there's a very Hitchcock look to the shot. It reminds me of Vertigo.
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