I’ll follow up Jeff’s post on faces with one that says “let’s bandage ‘em up!” (It certainly sounds better to say that than “in your face!” – Especially if the face in question just got melted or has otherwise disappeared.)

I just saw Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (Tanin no kao, 1966). It’s a beautifully crafted story about a man whose face has been disfigured by an industrial accident and who is offered a face transplant. Jeff already gave excellent coverage (no pun intended) to The Face of Another, and there is also a TCM review for the Teshigahara films that were recently bundled on a Criterion DVD release:

http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=150490

http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index/?cid=172116

Before the group of friends who joined me in watching The Face of Another left my house, they had to walk past my poster for John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966). It was interesting to think about these two similar films being made at the same time. Teshigahara was able to crack the western art-house market with Woman of the Dunes (Suna no onna, 1964), and Frankenheimer obviously also enjoyed previous success stories, but both Seconds and The Face of Another failed to find their audience upon their initial release. Past coverage on Seconds can be found here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2008/09/11/seconds-1966/

Another case in point that comes to mind in regards to similar films dealing with masks, sanity, and employing radical cinematic styles that were ahead of their time but coming out from different countries would be The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920) and Page of Madness (Kurutta ippeji, 1926). Maybe I shouldn’t say they were “ahead of their time” because, in fact, I think these two countries came up with similar films on their own for reasons entangled in the zeitgeist. For more on this subject, consult Siegfried Kracauer’s fascinating book, From Caligari to Hitler.

Returning to bandages, one must include a picture from Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage, 1960):

Of course, one of the most iconic bandaged faces in movie history is found in James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933):

What kid doesn’t dream of being invisible? Although this desire conveniently ignores the cautionary tale of madness that follows it. But nobody in their right mind would want to be a melting man, no matter how “incredible” the circumstances.

William Sachs’ The Incredible Melting Man (1977) reminds me that bandaged up faces that are melting are not necessarily gender specific, as anyone who has seen Terry Gilliams Brazil (1985) knows thanks to Mrs. Terrain’s unfortunate plastic surgery results (or, to be more precise, her “acid treatments”):

Timecrimes (Los Cronocrimenes, 2007) is another film I recently wrote about that shares something in common with The Face of Another, Seconds, Eyes Without a Face, and The Invisible Man insofar as it puts its bandaged protagonist on the cover of the movie poster.

And while doing a search on bandaged faces on the internet, here’s an interesting blurb:

Bandaged is S&M filmmaker Maria Beatty’s foray into the indie mainstream – if one could call a flick best described as Mädchen in Uniform meets The English Patient meets Eyes Without A Face “mainstream.” Fittingly, none other than Abel Ferrara is serving as executive producer, though it just as easily could have been David Cronenberg since Beatty’s stunningly visceral cocktail of sex and bodily terror would surely merit that auteur’s seal of approval. – Lauren Wissot

Natch, there’s a temptation to post a bunch of pictures from any of the many mummy films that are out there, but I think I’ll leave them out of this since they’re dead. Let’s stick with the living for now (be they sick, demented, invisible, melting, or lost in time).