Savant's new reviews today are

Apparently, it's official - Criterion has announced George's Franju's Eyes without a Face among their upcoming releases. The movie means a lot to me personally, as I spent most of the 1970s desperately trying to see it along with The Seventh Victim and Vertigo, two other dream pictures that were unavailable for a long period in those pre-video years. All three were movies that appeared in my dreams and became enlarged beyond their actual dimensions, so when I write about Eyes I'll try to keep in mind that others won't be starting from the assumption that it's a classic. It's slow and quiet and chilling in a way that hasn't been seen in a while. It's got an eerily naturalistic texture and a visual design derived from Jean Cocteau. The theme is hard to decipher: Mad surgery and atrocious medical ethics evoke fascism and the abuse of power, but like many older classic horror films, there's an element of beauty to the horror. It has one of Maurice Jarre's first and best musical scores, that was described by Raymond Durgnat as cruelly elegant, like "black ice." The disc will probably be my favorite of the year.

I'm back editing again, but this time I have stockpiled a few reviews so maybe the pace won't appear to drop as I start putting in longer hours. Enjoy the Oscars! Glenn Erickson