I don't think I've ever seen a film that marries the macabre and the gentle; the evil and the enlightened and the just plain horrifying in quite the way that Georges Franju does with this masterpiece. Pierre Brasseur as "Dr. Génessier" is simultaneously sinister, brutal, loving and tender as he uses every means at his disposal to try to correct an accident that has left his daughter "Christiane" (Edith Scob) disfigured. He will stop at nothing - quite literally - and the coup de grâce is still something that makes me shudder, even now. Not for the squeamish, nor is it gratuitous. It's just great.
