Event

HEAD AGAINST THE WALL

aka La Tete Contre Les Murs
Dir. Georges Franju, 1959.
France. 95 min.
In French with English subtitles.

Anouk Aimee. Charles Aznavour. A shimmering black motorcycle jacket. Georges Franju's Head Against The Wall taps into cinema's inherent attractions but renders its own utterly untenable, less a cautionary tale than a smoldering portrait of loss. Behind the gates of a countryside sanitorium lives young Francois (future filmmaker Jean-Pierre Mocky), the hotheaded son of a stuffy lawyer a wild one in the Brando tradition on the outside, bored to sedation within. Francois knows he's sane, but while waiting for this latest convulsion of The System to pass, all he can do is look at the people around him and now, without the comfort of his on-and-off girlfriend Stéphanie (Aimee), his visage isn't pretty.

Blessed with the same magisterial stillness and dark beauty that gave Eyes Without A Face its inimitable power, Franju's feature debut is both straightforward and serpentine. The screenplay (adapted from a Herve Bazin novel) posits mans place in society as anything but certain; as Francois seeks validation from parties neutral to his domineering father, his individuality seems to vanish. What develops is not a critique of doctors or hospitals, but instead of French paternalism at large. Under the heel of a society founded on class expectations, Francois doesn't lose his freedom so much as he realizes it never existed in the first place.

"He seeks the madness behind reality because it is for him the only way to rediscover the true face of reality behind this madness Let us say that Franju demonstrates the necessity of Surrealism if one considers it as a pilgrimage to the sources. And Head Against The Wall proves that he is right." - Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema

"Whether it's the weird, eerily erotic gaze of a female inmate or a strange gathering of doves or a cityscape by night that seems as dank and claustrophobic as the asylum walls themselves, Franju's mastery and palpable adoration of effect is ever evident." - Glenn Kenny, The Auteurs