A Woman’s Face
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and Elliot Paul from a play by Francis de Croisset
1941/USA Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Lars-Erik Barring: You couldn’t be mean. You’re too pretty![/box]
This film was much different than I expected and I truly enjoyed it.
The story is a remake of the 1938 film A Woman’s Face (“En kvinnas ansikte”) with Ingrid Bergman and takes place in contemporary Sweden. It is told as a number of flashbacks based on witness testimony at Anna’s murder trial.
When she was a child, Anna Holm (Joan Crawford) was caught in a fire started by her drunken father and her face was badly disfigured. She has lived as a bitter, hard, and ruthless blackmailer who runs a country inn as a front for her operation. One night, handsome ne’er-do-well Thorsten Barring (Conrad Veidt) comes into her office to ask for credit to cover a meal he has ordered. They recognize each other as kindred spirits and he is the first man who has looked her in the eyes without flinching. They start seeing each other and Anna is in love for the first time.
She meets plastic surgeon Dr. Gusaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas) by chance when she is at his house blackmailing his wife about some incriminating love letters. He too looks at her without flinching and announces that he can fix her face. She goes through several painful operations and emerges a beautiful woman.
Barring finally reveals that there is only one four-year-old grandchild standing between him and a large inheritance from his uncle. The couple hatch a scheme to send Anna as a governess to the county estate of uncle Consul Magnus Barring (Albert Bassermann). Anna, still madly in love with Barring, is to murder the boy there. This proves to be easier said than done. With Marjorie Main as the Consul’s long-time housekeeper and Donald Meek as a criminal associate of Anna’s.
I thought the story was very well told as the plot elements were ever so gradually revealed. I was so engaged that I never saw some probably predictable developments coming. The snowy setting is beautiful as well. Joan Crawford is a sometime thing for me but Cukor gets a wonderfully subdued “unglamorous” performance out of her both before and after her surgery. Veidt is suitably charming and villainous. I’m surprised that this one didn’t get quite a few Oscar nominations but 1941 is turning out to be a year packed with gems. Recommended.
Trailer
Another under-viewed winner! Crawford was never better, in my opinion.
I really liked it a lot. Crawford is so much more real than usual in this. The supporting cast was also excellent.
This sounds really good, like a movie that would fit Crawford.
I always think of Veidt as the somnabulist in Dr Caligari, but he seems to have done a lot of other stuff too.
I think I prefer Crawford’s performance in this to Mildred Pierce, and I liked her a lot in that too. I have found that Veidt makes any movie he is in that much better. And here he doesn’t play a Nazi and has a bigger part than usual.
Nice to see another positive review of this movie. It really is underrated and it really wouldn’t be going too far to say Crawford and Veidt both deserved at least nominations for Oscars in here, IMHO. I’ve never seen either do such naturalistic and restrained acting. They could both get really hammy at their worst but Cukor brought out fantastically subtle performances out of them. I love all the little touches with the body language (how he can make her fall apart just by touching her fairly lightly is far more effective than him manhandling her–incredibly erotic, too) and the slight genderbending going on (she’s the tough gangster boss walking witha brisk stride, with restrained, reserved body language and he is effectively a vamp in a tuxedo, slinking and using his body and sensuality to get what he wants). It’s really one of those movies one can watch several times and always find something new.
It is amazing what a good director can do for an actor, isn’t it? Cukor may have deserved a nomination even more. Also, he isn’t known for it but did very well with climactic sled chase and the suspense elements also.
Thanks for stopping by. I tried to check out your blog and was disappointed to find so little there.
I appreciated the sled scene very much, even if I know a lot of modern viewers would be put off by the back-projection (I think it worked really well).
There isn’t anything on my WordPress blog because I mostly blog on other platforms. I aim to post some decent analysis of this particular film on there at some point, perhaps, but my style of fannishness (which tends towards the flaily, humorous and smutty) is better suited to places like LiveJournal and even the kindergarten that’s Tumblr (and I’m disappointed in WP charging money for the sorts of customisations other platforms offer for free and don’t feel really comfortable when I can’t make my blogs look the way I want them to). I just get the feeling it’d be considered gross and/or disrespectful and not serious enough on WP (even if I can be pretty academic and serious about things at times.) Perhaps I’ll crosspost some of the more serious analytical stuff here one day; we’ll see. I mean, I could write a paper on this movie alone…
A bit late to the party on this one….I discarded it originally (a) because of Crawford (and I did see your and commenters, big plus, still…) and (b) Hollywood remake – yes it was a long time before this term gets really horrible connotations for me and it is Cukor, still….), time for a revisit and query.
I thought I’d ask you Bea, font of all movie knowledge, LOL, how does this compare to the original with Bergman?
I see that I rated the Bergman version highly but I don’t remember a thing about it. Whereas this one left a lasting impact. I usually dread anything with Joan Crawford, am sometimes proved wrong – and certainly was with this one.
Thanks Bea