The Face of Another (1967)

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a physically and emotionally wounded man. After an industrial accident at work, his face has been scarred and mutilated beyond recognition, and even his wife rejects him, even though she says his physical appearance doesn't matter. It has left him bitter and angry, until his psychiatrist Dr. Hira (Mikijiro Hira) comes up with a way to fashion a 'face mask' that will give him the appearance of having a completely normal face, albeit with a few joining marks. Hira doesn't do this just out of kindness, he is fascinated how this new face will alter Okuyama's personality and way of life.The Face of Another is a fascinating film that highlights the social attitudes to physical appearance. There are hundreds of films and morality tales that teach you that it is inner beauty that counts, and once you allow this to shine then your physical attractiveness becomes irrelevant. Everyone knows that this is bullshit, so its refreshing to see a film that makes it clear from the outset that physical appearance has a massive part to play in society. Okuyama's new face, which is an attractive one, changes him so much that he takes on an almost dual identity. Dr. Hira delights in telling him that he has bought flashy new clothes, something he was never concerned with before. It becomes clear that whilst before Okuyama merely wanted to be normal again and fit back in society, his new face is engulfing him, and to be 'normal' simply isn't enough anymore.As with many of the Japanese New Wave film-makers of the 1960's-70's, director Hiroshi Teshigahara takes some bold steps and sneaks in some surrealist and art-house values in a movie that is otherwise played relatively straight. A 'fictional' character appears every now and then throughout (she is first imagined by Okuyama's wife as a character in a movie); one side of her face is scarred and burned. She appears quite rarely, but seems to serve as an alternative to Okuyama's increasingly vain soul. Another scene seems a ball of hair that floats in the air, unnoticed by the people in the laboratory. I have no idea what it meant, and couldn't really admit to it being wholly successful, but it certainly got my attention nonetheless.A powerful, disturbing, and poignant drama/horror from the greatest era in Japanese cinema. The film seems all the more important now, 45 years on, in a world where a botox injection can be as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes, and where physical 'beauty' is less a bonus than a necessity.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

I have just watched "The face of another" twice, and am still feeling the reverberations of it's meaning. The emotional/psychological insights of Abe and Teshigahara, spoken through the characters of Okuyama and the psychiatrist, will give you more than enough to ponder. What are we in relationship to others if we are faceless; characterless? How are we to measure ourselves if our experience has no relativity to the world outside? Right from the beginning, the film establishes it's goal of revealing, heartbreakingly, the insecurity of the individual. Okuyama tries hard to laugh at his fate but the truth of his dependence on acceptance wears him thin and forces his well meaning wife and colleagues to the brink of their own prejudices. Tatsuya Nakadai, perfectly takes Okuyama from voluntary, shamed exile to hiding in plain sight, seeming to miss how that transformation might have occurred. While Mikijiro Hira goes for the ride, with a scientists abandon for the experiment, despite his very clear understanding of the pitfalls of invisibility.There is a small story within the larger one, that of a young girl whose face, on one side, has been horribly disfigured (the other side is startlingly beautiful) by the bomb at Nagasaki. The first viewing of this left me feeling that this section was curious but disjointed. The second viewing had me considering, a bit more, some of the accompanying imagery that we see in these scenes. What really stands out are the images of soldiers in an asylum, the fire range and the strangely pictorial images of her and her brother at the beach. There is also her constant fear of another war. I began to see her story as a metaphor for the changing, perhaps now horribly disfigured face, of Japan itself. Coupling this idea with some of the urban crowd scenes in the main story or the body parts in vitrines in the doctor's office I began to feel the two stories weave together.For the avid film lover, this movie is also a treat for the eyes with stunning set designs, doppelgangers, mirrored scenes and well placed, well timed editing twists.A must see!!!

This is a nice movie about a whiny faceless complaining. There is another half faceless who has her face licked by her brother before walking into the ocean to die. the whiny faceless has a nice beard which he uses to try to trick a retard girl. his wife is not impressed. i give it 7. the doctor is a sicko and wants everyone to be faceless because he says there would be no crime that way. i don't get what he meant by that. i guess he's referring to the low crime rate in china. i don't know what i meant by that. anyway, it makes u think a lot. i suggest you get your hands on a copy of this gem. It's very cerebral in that way. Sometimes when i was watching this movie, i couldn't help thinking if i had the power to change my face, who i would try to seduce. i don't think it would be my wife like this guy did, mostly because i don't have a wife. if you are going for a faceless theme, this movie makes a good double feature with Eyes Without A Face. that's a french film. This movie should not be confused with the Mel Gibson classic Man Withoug A Face.

movie about self perception and the bond between the mind and the body...soundtrak really set the mood for the increasing horror in the story line. Nakadai downplays his role to give an overall flawless performance. Watch for some really good lines which will undoubtedly force the viewer to start thinking right away which may distract from the plot (but hey, it's an artsy masterpiece right?)...There is a lot of experimentation in the cinematography such as a door which opens and reveals a cluster of hair in ocean tides...this effect serves to foreshadow the action but may in the view of modern audiences comes across as trying TOO hard to be an art film. I left the movie still trying to link the two parallel story lines in the film and you may too...but don't worry you get two stories for the price of one...DO NOT watch this movie in the dark even though there is nothing VISUALLY terrifying it is still a great horror film...