Director · Screenwriter · 1912–1987

Georges Franju

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Eyes Without a Face

Georges Franju, Claude Sautet · 1960

Eyes Without a Face (1960) is a French arthouse horror film directed by Georges Franju, following a plastic surgeon who kidnaps women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. Shot by Eugen Schüfftan and scored by Maurice Jarre, it sustains a tone of poetic anguish rather than visceral terror. Its restrained performances, deliberate pacing, and clinical visuals have earned it retrospective acclaim as a landmark of moral and aesthetic horror.

13:00

Judex

Georges Franju · 1963

Georges Franju’s 1963 Judex is a neo-noir reimagining of Louis Feuillade’s silent serial, prioritising visual grammar over narrative fidelity. Set in a world of masked balls, black-leotarded cat burglars, and rooftop duels fought in near-silence, it disperses moral agency across women — Jacqueline, Diana, and Daisy — while reducing Judex himself to a handsome, enigmatic cipher. Marcel Fradetal’s high-contrast cinematography, Maurice Jarre’s restrained score, and Franju’s unhurried pacing build a film less about crime-solving than about how justice, power, and identity are performed.