Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 25-December-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium

A Woman's Face (1941)

If you're craving a psychological/courtroom thriller this Christmas, George Cukor's A Woman's Face is a fitting choice. Its finale involves loads of snow, a sleigh ride, jingle bells, a jolly old man, and an adorable child. It also involves a plot to kill the child for his money, which admittedly isn't part of the standard yuletide tradition.

Events leading up to the sleigh ride are recalled during the murder trial of a Stockholm native named Anna Holm. Joan Crawford gives an exquisite performance in this role, which was filled by Ingrid Bergman in the Swedish production of the drama three years before. Mostly with her eyes, Crawford expresses the extreme bitterness and desperate longing of a woman who felt excluded from normal life ever since her face was burned when she was a girl. As witnesses describe their dealings with her, we see that her scars went much deeper than her skin. The first witnesses tell how Anna was running a blackmailing operation when she met urbane idler Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt) and was bowled over because he didn't cringe at the sight of her. Her criminal partners mocked her subsequent infatuation but could not have guessed to what lengths it would take her.

The defendant admits that she was in love with Barring although he admired her only for her anger. He wanted a partner as depraved as himself and was disappointed when she left for a few months and came back with a beautiful visage and rosier outlook. A plastic surgeon (Melvyn Douglas) fills in the details of this part of the story: how he met Anna when she was squeezing a large sum of money out of his adulterous wife and ended up performing multiple surgeries on her. His assistance placed Anna between two competing forces. On the one hand was Barring, who hoped to tap the bile caused by her disfiguration so she would commit a murder profitable to himself; on the other hand was the surgeon, who erased the source of her rage and presented the hope that her soul could heal along with her face.

The final testimonies reveal that Anna was in the throes of these two forces when she took a job as governess at the estate of Barring's gentlemanly old uncle (Albert Bassermann). Here the wholesome influences of country life and her pupil continued to melt her heart. When both Barring and the surgeon arrived for a visit, matters came to a head and ended in a killing. After so many years of resentful yearning, her life of crime and the dark plots that led to her trial, you would think Anna's future must be grim. But the movie pulls a happy ending out of a hat and almost makes you believe it. Crawford's depiction of all Anna's fortunes helps you accept that a pretty face, and the gentle femininity it suggests, is all a woman needs.

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