(Des)aparições do rosto em Os olhos sem rosto

Abstract

Eyes without a face (George Franju, 1960) tells the tale of Christiane, whose face was gravely disfigured by a car accident caused by her father, the professor and medical doctor Génessier. In an attempt to recover his daughter’s visage, Génessier and Louise, his assistant and former patient, start kidnapping young women who resemble Christiane in order to transplant their skin onto the girl’s face and reestablish her normal life. Our present study begins with the analysis of the film and its thematic as a way of reflecting on the figurative emergencies of the face in artistic form and its relevance in contemporary society. We then attempted to establish a dialogue with various authors from the fields of anthropology, philosophy, sociology and literature (AGAMBEN, 2015; BAKHTIN, 1987; BAQUÉ, 2007; BRETON, 1992, 1998, 2013; COURTINE; HAROCHE, 1988; TUCHERMAN, 2012) in order to outline a trajectory of the face in figurative forms. Our concern was particularly in two crucial historical axis, which at certain points overlap: the transition from the medieval depictions to the modern aesthetics; and the turn from the XIX to the XX century. In the third chapter, our goal was to trace the development of the close-up shot and other forms of framing the face throughout movie history, with the aid of theorists, film critics and moviemakers who approached the theme (AUMONT, 1992; BALÁZS, 2010; DELEUZE, 1983; EISENSTEIN, 2002; EPSTEIN, 1974). Finally, the final chapter conducts the analysis of the three main characters of Eyes without a face, with focus in their (dis)appearances in the reel. Our purpose was to construct a net of interpretations around the materialization of these countenances, their links with the general assembly of the movie and their relationships with categories such as mask, gaze, touch and disfiguration.