Georges Franju's macabre masterpiece, originally released in the U.S. with English dubbing under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, an elegant, graceful, stately, almost ceremonial variation on the mad-scientist theme. A megalomaniacal plastic surgeon (the stocky, stolid Pierre Brasseur), responsible for his daughter's facial disfigurement, is determined to repair the damage, and toward that end dispatches his faithful assistant (Alida Valli, in symbolic dog-collar necklace) to cruise the streets and pick up compatible skin donors — a classic discreet screen lesbian. The naiveté of the vision — the replacement face is peeled off its owner in one piece and fitted onto the recipient like a rubber mask — only puts it in closer touch with the worlds of dreams and fairy tales. Unsurpassed black-and-white photography by the eminent Eugen Schüfftan, infusing perfectly natural and mundane settings with eldritch Expressionistic elements; haunting musical theme by Maurice Jarre, in melancholy waltz time; liberal sprinkling of the director's unmistakable I.D. marks: the interior decorator's eye for pattern and texture; birds; abused animals; the angelic Edith Scob as standard-bearer of innocence and virtue. Scob's is a beautiful acting job from behind a stiff, smooth, blank mask (save for a brief period of post-surgical optimism), relying largely on the expressive devices of sculpture and dance rather than the full tool kit available to the average thespian. (1959) — Duncan Shepherd