SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Eyes Without a Face (1960) by Georges Franju

Sunday, March 22, 1987, 8:00 pm

Insights of Horror: Franju & Buñuel

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE

800 Chestnut Street

San Francisco, CA, 94133

Eyes without a Face is a masterpiece of B&W cinematic expressionism that thoroughly transcends its genre. A renowned plastic surgeon responsible for the disfigurement of his daughter attempts to graft the faces of kidnapped young women onto hers. The film beautifully evokes mood and atmosphere with its careful attention to light, texture and detail. Blood of the Beasts, on the surface a record of the operation of a Paris slaughterhouse, blends the cruel and the commonplace to become a poignant document of poetic realism. Bunuel’s curious Land without Bread leads one to question the authenticity of this “documentary” about a pathetic village whose people suffer every manner of cruelty that nature chooses to inflict.