Savant's new reviews today are
Two items to relate tonight, one normal and the other very odd. First, PBS is showing the disc I just reviewed of Oklahoma! in LA tonight, so it might be playing in your vicinity soon. I'm going to tune in for a peek, just to see if they've left it letterboxed (as it looks so good that way) or done some kind of scan on it. As this is a big Saturday show, I wouldn't be surprised if it were sawed up into ten parts and used as a subscription drive attraction ... I'll send in my money, but I'll watch this thing back on the DVD where it looks better.
The second issue is more off the wall. Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face) is on the art theater circuit right now in a revitalized print, and may be coming to DVD in the next couple of years. But today's LA times had a small column about a medical report that face transplants are now possible but unlikely, for (unelaborated) ethical and moral reasons. I always thought the weakest part of the Georges Franju movie, that now makes audiences giggle instead of faint, was the surgery scene where a face is lifted from a victim as a one-piece mask, with cut-out holes for the eyes and mouth. The newspaper illustration for the little article is identical - with a cutout for the nose too. How practical a Frankenstein-like cookie cutter face would be, I don't know, but the article is dead serious about the details of reconnecting nerves and the like. It also falls into line with Franju's medical details, which I once thought were hooey (well, at least the radiation treatment part). The text says that the new face would be a combination of the donor and the recipient (a chilling aspect of Yeux), and that the recipient would have to take anti-rejection drugs indefinitely. The tissue rejection issue is the main thrust of the movie - I reread the article three times, trying to determine if it was a joke!
The accuracy of the original 1959 movie may be related to a real plastic surgeon I saw profiled on 60 minutes in the late 70s. He was French, and honed his craft reconstructing shattered faces in WW2, becoming known as a miracle man. In the filmed interview, he was as arrogant and self-important as an opera tenor with a bad attitude, obviously way over-impressed with his abilities and talent ... not unlike Georges Franju's Dr. Genessier of Les yeux. I immediately decided that if he wasn't the inspiration for the horror film, he should have been.
The idea of identity changing plastic surgery chills me to the bone, to coin a phrase. A PBS show I once saw talked about reshaping faces where skulls had not developed properly, and thoughtfully explained the process of dropping the whole face from the skull like a peeled banana, doing major bone work, and then explained how the face would be tacked back into place. Then they started to show the real thing - and I dived for the channel changer like my life depended on it. Interesting the things one doesn't feel the need to see with one's own eyes ...
This LA Times article really takes the cake. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at November 23, 2003 12:05 AM