jamesraeburn2003 A businessman called Richard Hammond (John Gregson) is visited by his wife Christiane (Mia Zetterling) at his factory who asks for a divorce. That same day Hammond is blinded as a result of an accident in his workshop and his wife backs down on her decision vowing to take care of him. Richard's layabout brother Max (John Ireland) appears asking for money and his business partner David Merton (Michael Denison) seems keen to take over the day to day running of the business completely. Prior to the accident, Merton was worried because his partner was insistent on his company funding the Apollo bulb project entirely by themselves despite warnings from the bank and offers from a rival firm to put financial backing into it. It risked bankrupting them completely. When the Hammonds go to their Cornish summer house for a holiday, they are joined by David and Max and Richard starts to suspect that his wife and business partner are plotting to drive him insane before murdering him. However, his blindness means that he is very vulnerable and it is even harder for him to prove his suspicions against them...A long missed British psychological thriller with a plot that promises to be a real nail biter, but somehow fails to connect with our nerves throughout the first half of the picture. The concept of a vulnerable blind man being tricked into believing that he is losing his mind is a good one and the screenplay by Ephraim Kogan and John Tully from a novel by Pierre Boileau (the guy who wrote the novel upon which Hitchcock's Vertigo was based) allows for a number of twists and turns that really should pile on the suspense. For example, Gregson's attempts to find his way around what he believes to be his holiday home in Cornwall - in reality, Christiane and David have transported him to a similar property in France in order to get him away from any contact with anybody he knows and making it easier to murder him without suspicion - and discovering that things are not in their proper places such as wall sockets not being in the place they should be when he goes to plug in his electric razor and the peach trees he once planted in the gardens are not in the place he remembers them. Then, later, he is lead to believe that his brother has died and he gets his chauffeur to drive him to the cemetery so that he can visit the grave and finds his own name carved on the headstone. Yet, director David Eady is unable to get a performance from his leading man that conveys the sense of paranoia, self doubt and helplessness of his character for it to ignite and the build up is sadly rather flat and lifeless.However, the film does pick up speed and resource in an exciting last reel when Gregson escapes from the house and runs helplessly through the woods at night. The suspense increases when he comes to a railroad crossing and the barriers come down trapping him and he only narrowly avoids being run over by a train. Ken Hodges' b/w camera-work works wonders in these scenes. He awakes at a hospital where he finds that the doctor and nurse attending to him are French and they do not believe his story about Christiane and David's elaborate plot to drive him out of his mind before killing him so that they can get control of his money believing him to be mad. They send for his wife to come and take him home despite his protestations and he is immediately put back into dire peril. The climax, it has to be said, carries a genuine charge of fear and there is little sense of relief either. So, despite a slow start, Faces In The Dark is nonetheless well worth the watch.

rhonda-ferry Actually felt the frustration of John Gregson's character and didn't have an idea of the end until the last 10 minutes and still it surprised. A lot of "darlings" and "proper" English, being that age, and meaningful looks between the characters. Being in black & white only adds to the "depressed" feeling that nobody can help the main character and his attempts to help himself are excruciating. It's difficult to write 10 lines without containing a spoiler, so I might waffle a bit, but the characters played by Mai Zatterling and dear old Michael Denison are despicable. I'm surprised I've never seen this film before and will probably watch it again in the future. If it were in French with subtitles it would probably be labelled a masterpiece!

dbdumonteil I have always thought that "Les Visages De L'Ombre" was Boileau-Narcejac's best novel,even Superior,in several respects to the more celebrated "Celle Qui N'Etait Plus" (which Clouzot rewrote as "Les Diaboliques" ) and to "D'Entre Les Morts " (transferred to the screen by Hitchcock as "Vertigo".Much to my surprise,this movie was never released in France,at a time when their novels were extremely popular over here :in the late fifties and sixties,there was "Les Louves" (Saslavski,1957),"Meurtres En 45 Tours "(Etienne Périer,1960 from "A Cœur Perdu" )"Maldonne" (Sergio Gobbi ,1969) and "Maléfices" (Henri Decoin,1962,starring Juliette Greco,which is never to be found:however,given the quality of the book,it must possess considerable appeal for fans of Boileau-Narcejac's style.)These books are,par excellence,"the novel of the victim" ,and the victim is always a man;women are all femme fatale in these works which some may find misogynist ."Les Visages De L'Ombre" ,as an user already pointed out,is a cruel story :so hard and so desperate was the ending that the editors asked their winning team to sweeten it ,to make it more moral:they did not ,but anyway are their other detective stories so optimistic?Among all these murder mysteries ,"Les Visages De L'Ombre " is the hardest to transfer to the screen:when you read it,you live the whole story through a blind man's eyes,so to speak.You do not know what Christiane and David (Hubert in the book) feel ;in the last part of the movie,the actors are compelled to overplay,whereas in the book,the characters remain "neutral" ,even kind .The suspense is increased tenfold.David Eady made the best of the novel:he certainly could not direct a movie with a central character surrounded by fog and smoke and darkness.His actors direction is faultless,particularly John Ireland as Maxime ,the unfortunate hero's brother.He made Christianne's lover an amateur painter ,which is a good way of introducing the peach tree episode.By and large ,except for the final ,in which the screenwriters did what Boileau-Narcejac's editors urged them to do before their book was released ,the screenplay is faithful like a dog to the initial story . The scene in the cemetery ,which scared me to death when I read the book for the first time,is skillfully filmed :Richard's fingers touching the cross and discovering the awful truth compares favorably with Clouzot's and Hitchcock's best frightening moments ;on the other hand,Richard's desperate escape in the country is too short :this is perhaps,however,the only moment when Eady could recreate Richard's plight ,alone in the darkest night and losing his bearings ,and the trick of the level crossing -not from the book- does not make up for it.It was an arduous task :I do not think a remake would do the novel justice or else it would have to be an avant-garde thriller with one character and darkness.But I would recommend it to all Boileau-Narcejac's buffs in my country.NB:There's also a German MTV version "Gesichte Des Schattens" .(1984)

mortlich I was staggered to read some of the other reviews of this film, as I found it to be one of the best mystery thrillers it has been my pleasure to see. From start to finish, this is a film which does not flag, which remains taut and full of suspense throughout, and which keeps the viewer endlessly and tensely speculating about just what is going on : is the blinded Mr Hammond just paranoid, or is he really likely to be murdered ? That is perhaps the main question, but there are other related issues which keep the viewer on tenterhooks, and the overall result is an excellent hour and a half's viewing. All good things come to an end, as they say, and this film certainly comes to an end that one never could see coming !