Hiroshi Teshigahara-Tanin no kao (’The Face of Another’) (1966)

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A staggering work of existential science fiction, The Face of Another dissects identity with the sure hand of a surgeon. Okuyama (Yojimbo’s Tatsuya Nakadai), after being burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and estranged from his family and friends, agrees to his psychiatrist’s radical new experiment: a face transplant, created from the mold of a stranger. As Okuyama is thus further alienated from the strange world around him, he finds himself giving in to his darker temptations. With unforgettable imagery, Teshigahara’s film explores both the limits and freedom in acquiring a new persona, and questions the notion of individuality itself. Criterion







Following Woman of the Dunes [Suna no onna] in 1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara continued his collaboration with avant-garde novelist/playwright Kobo Abe and experimental composer Toru Takemitsu for The Face of Another [Tanin no kao]. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai (Yojimbo, Kagemusha) as a man “buried alive behind eyes without a face”, the film addresses the illusive nature of identity and the agony of its absence. Masters of Cinema







A man (Nakadai) facially disfigured in a laboratory fire persuades his doctor to fashion him a lifelike mask modeled on a complete stranger — totally different from his own face. Shortly after the mask is made, he successfully seduces his own wife (Machiko Kyo) but becomes angry at her falling for a handsome stranger. Worrying about his looks, and the way the mask seems to influence his identity, he begins to question everything. Masters of Cinema







Takemitsu’s musical score is one of his best, contrasting sweet, sad melodies with eerie, experimental motifs. Alongside Franju’s Les Yeux sans visage [Eyes Without a Face], Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Whale’s Frankenstein, and Freund’s Mad Love, Teshigahara and Abe’s The Face of Another stands proud as one of cinema’s most haunting explorations of identity. Masters of Cinema







A businessman facially scarred in a laboratory fire receives psychotherapy from a psychiatrist, and obtains an amazingly lifelike mask from the doctor. Soon after being fitted for the mask, he seduces his wife and succeeds. But his wife claims she was aware all along who he was and believed that both were just masquerading together as most couples usually do in different ways. Strangely enough, his personality seemingly begins to change after he puts on the mask as if the mask has influenced his personality. His new identity does not enable him to reintegrate into society after all. A subplot is inserted in fragments. A good-natured young woman, the right side of whose face is disfigured, has been hurt by others’ inquisitive eyes and insults, and has been shunned by men. She asks her older brother, the only man who understands her pain and solitude, to make love to her, hiding from him the intent of killing herself after then. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0061065/plotsummary)







This follow-up to Abe and Teshigahara’s Sunna no Onna (1965) is even more surrealistic, thanks to the intrusion of science fiction elements. Tatsuya Nakadai (X) is horribly burned it a laboratory accident and seeks the help of Dr. K___, who designs a new face for him out of a realistic mask. Is the mask controlling him, or did he create the personality of the mask? He randomly remembers scenes from a film he saw in which Bibari Maeda was a horribly scarred woman (Hiroshima), shunned by most people, who commits incest with her brother and throws herself into the sea. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0061065/plotsummary)