The Face of Another

A middle aged businessman with a disfigured face seeks to escape his reflection and his daily life. A new doctor offers him a perfectly lifelike mask that hides his scar and changes how others respond to him. Worn in public, the disguise lets him act with a renewed certainty, yet the line between the wearer and the masked man starts to blur. As the mask unlocks new desires and fears, he begins to question whether the man behind the face is truly him. People react differently when he wears it, from flirtatious strangers to wary colleagues, and his own sense of time and memory grows unsettled. The drama quietly probes identity, perception, and the price of redefining oneself through appearance.

Hiroshi Teshigahara directs this adaptation of Kobo Abe's novel, released in 1966. The film blends tense psychological drama with stark, geometric visuals, marking a landmark collaboration between a renowned director and an iconic author. The screenplay preserves Abe's unsettling themes while allowing Teshigahara's meticulous mise en scene to shape the mood.

Box office data for The Face of Another from 1966 is not widely documented. The film is typically regarded as an art house classic rather than a mainstream commercial hit. Its enduring reputation stems from critical praise and influence.

With its piercing use of masks to explore identity and alienation, the film left a lasting mark on art house cinema. Its spare visuals and unsettling mood echo in later sci fi and psychological dramas that question how we present ourselves to the world. Its influence can be seen in later works that blend material reality with memory.

Critics typically praise the film for its eerie atmosphere and the way it uses a simple premise to probe deep questions about selfhood, memory, and perception. Performances by Tatsuya Nakadai and Machiko Kyō heighten the unsettling tension between surface and reality.