Félicia Atkinson on the five sounds that built Sans Visage, her reimagined score for Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face. Alarms, storms and the ghosts of Twin Peaks, all built from the same hidden optimism.

Words by Félicia Atkinson

1. The sound of Christiane (Les Yeux III and Sans Visage I)

This is Christiane's theme, played by the fantastic actress Edith Scob. I wanted to create an eerie sound that she would somehow own. It is composed as a kind of alarm, like in the audiobooks I would listen to as a kid: when you hear that sound, she is around. The sound becomes a kind of secret companion, an angel that protects her. I also wanted a sound like an imaginary, eerie face for her, rather than a mask. Something that hides her but makes her even more herself: her, Christiane, who has lost her face in the accident, and Edith Scob, the actress playing the role, each carrying the other's persona.

2. The sound of the road (Les Yeux I)

In Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage), there are many spooky road sequences. The car is always a menace in the film: the opening accident, and also the first trap the women are caught in before joining the mansion. I wanted to imagine a theme that embodies the sinuous road at night leaving Paris for the outskirts, and the claustrophobic feeling of being a woman trapped in a car at night. I composed this theme to look and sound like a storm about to arrive, or a fog falling over the landscape, although somewhere in it another road still runs through, a way out, a hidden path. For this theme there is no piano or Fender Rhodes, only electronics. Since Eyes Without a Face is a genre film, a horror film, there is also a hidden humour in it: the bad guys are a bit ridiculous. Franju, the director, always brings a kind of distance to the terror, mocking it, making it less invasive. So there is a kind of distance in the "over-spookiness" of how I composed the road theme.

While I was composing this imaginary score, there were a lot of stories in the newspapers about doctors who took advantage of their patients while giving them anaesthesia. It gave me the creeps. I wanted to compose a theme especially for that, about the dormant part that resists the abuse. It's also a metaphor for cinema, where we can consider the viewer so passive, facing an illusion, but we can also decide the viewer is active and full of agency, even in silence and stillness. What matters most to me here is that on each "spooky" track I composed for the film, there is a hidden optimism: the music leads an escape for the victims to get free, one way or another. It's also a hand toward the spectator, so they don't feel alone while watching. The music says, "We're not alone here, we're together."

"I thought about the freedom of imagination for a very long time. What it means."

3. The sound of the stairs (Sans Visage I)

The piano often plays the role of a staircase in the soundtrack. Watching Eyes Without a Face, I kept thinking that David Lynch might have seen this before making Twin Peaks, with all the stair scenes in Laura Palmer's house. And of course, like for many others, Badalamenti has been a huge influence on me. What interests me again here is the female gaze on this kind of stairs scene. When Christiane appears on the top floor of the mansion, it evokes both her theme and the stairs: the low-angle shots typical of such scenes, the sense of ascent and descent. Fragile as she seems, she dominates from above, like a hawk on a branch, very still. The piano notes fall like steps, one by one, or like rain, in decrescendo. It's a secret homage also to Morton Feldman's Palais de Mari. I always found his music very connected to suspense. People see it as serious music; I often listen to it as mystery crime music.

4. The sound of the black and white (Les Yeux IV)

Eyes Without a Face is a film from the '60s that looks like a black-and-white movie from the '50s. Franju was looking for a vintage setup, a kind of "moiré effect," something from the past, a bit nostalgic. It also reminds me of The Servant by Joseph Losey. It's also a critique of the old French bourgeoisie, and the way it locked women at home. The black and white in the film is extremely graphic, which is why we asked the artist Mo Gordon to draw those sumptuous drawings for the album covers and artwork. The interior shots in the film look like black-and-white etchings. In this track, I'm trying to render the feeling of black and white: contrast, but also hues and shades, and how it gives a special quality to all the details in the film, the objects, the clothes, the curtains, the hair...

"I was carrying this sense of also wanting to be able to play music for this film, at least in my imagination, even if the images are lacking, because now they are in my memory."

5. The sound of the birds and freedom (Sans Visage V)

This is the final sequence, when Christiane opens the cages. The Fender Rhodes brings warmth to this glacial environment. The electronics are composed like little butterflies or snowflakes dancing in the night light. Since the company that owns the rights to Eyes Without a Face forbade me from playing it again, I had to compose an independent version of the music that detached itself from the film somehow. I found the metaphor interesting, like a Frankenstein set free. I was carrying this sense of also wanting to be able to play music for this film, at least in my imagination, even if the images are lacking, because now they are in my memory. I thought about the freedom of imagination for a very long time, what it means. This track is about hope, freedom, peace, the power of hope and vulnerability. It's an eco-feminist theme of some kind: freedom for all the dreamers, and also for all the victims of violence, freedom for all the caregivers, for all the women, the children, the sick people, freedom for the rivers, the endangered species, the helpers, the high seas, freedom for the never-ending glaciers and icebergs, but also freedom for the unsung songs, the unspoken poems, and for the people who take the time to listen to all of this.

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