Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Sexylocher Masterful Movie

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Mikel3 We viewed this movie last night through TCM on demand; I'd only seen parts of it in the past, not the whole film. I was impressed by Joan Crawford's skillful depiction of a highly intelligent woman whose face had been disfigured when she was as child. Her character seemed to be a genius in her knowledge and musical abilities. Because of her appearance she'd been shunned and unjustly treated; this forced her to hide half of her face from others. She spends most of her time in seclusion with a band of misfits and crooks. Her rejection by society turned her into a seemingly heartless blackmailer among other things. We could see that beneath her bitterness was a spark of something else, something good perhaps; her doctor played by Melvyn Douglas sees this too. Her doctor presents her with hope to restore her face using his skill, but will it work? It was an unusual role for Ms. Crawford IMO, at this stage in her career I'd figured she'd always want to look her most beautiful in roles. I couldn't imagine her appearing less than attractive even for part of a film; yet here she allowed her face to appear disfigured in some scenes. It was reminiscent for me of scenes that Gloria Grahame did years later in 'The Big Heat', another excellent film. The supporting cast in 'A Woman's Face' is good, especially Conrad Veidt as the evil man who has her in his power because he finds her attractive. For him she is willing to do anything...almost. The unthinkable crime he wants her to commit is the crux of the story, I won't reveal it here except to say at times we were on the edge of our seats wondering would she do it. Also of note in the supporting cast are Marjorie Main as a servant jealous of Joan and Albert Bassermann as a kindly grandfather. I highly recommend this film and give it a rating of 8 out of 10 stars.

mark.waltz Exterior or interior, how is a woman's beauty judged? For Joan Crawford in "A Woman's Face", she knows that her scars make her ugly, so like Boris Karloff in 1935's "The Raven", ugliness makes her do ugly things. The evil Conrad Veidt discovers this and plots to utilize her for his own evil gains. She uses the facade of running a country inn for her pick-pocketing and blackmail ring, and while confronting one of her victims (Osa Massen), gets the opportunity to rid herself of the scars on her face. Melvyn Douglas as Massen's surgeon husband arranges to perform plastic surgery on Crawford, but realizes all he is creating is a gorgeous monster, something worse than Frankenstein's monster, a woman with no heart. But the moment she is out in public, Crawford's bitterness slowly begins to dwindle, as evidenced by a child smiling at her after she instinctively tries to hide her face.Giving her greatest performance while at MGM, Crawford is not a creature of the night, nor is she the view of what a woman should have been at that time. But she is still a monster. What will change her? That is what this melodrama is about, seen through the eyes of the various people who must testify for or against her when she is put on trial for Veidt's murder. While views of what beauty is has changed, this is still an excellent film, a psychological portrayal of a woman filled with self-hatred that turns to evil deeds as a way of survival, and found it difficult to escape from that self-hatred when her physical looks were restored to her."You're too pretty to be mean", her ward says when she is hired as his nanny. Crawford melts only briefly at this comment, sent to be the governess as part of an evil scheme arranged by Veidt, uncle of the adorable child. Each of the people testifying have a reason for hating her, and in some ways, they were justified in their dislike of her. Her old gang members (Donald Meek, Reginald Owen, Connie Gilchrist), co-workers at the estate where she works as a governess (Marjorie Main), and most venomously, the whiny Ona Massen, whom Crawford discovered love letters for from a man not her husband. When Massen started whining in her pathetic efforts to make husband Melvyn Douglas feel sorry for her, I wanted to whack her over and over just like Crawford did. Main's dour housekeeper isn't quite a Mrs. Danvers ("Rebecca") type, but she's still cold none the less, and Main gives a brilliant performance. As much as I like Connie Gilchrist, I had a hard time with her obviously American dialect in this Eastern European set role.As for Conrad Veidt, his performance is filled with innuendos that border on the occult. He openly talks about working for Satan and how great things come to people who do great evil. That is very chilling considering what was going on in Europe at the time as well as the fact that Veidt had defected from his native Germany to escape Hitler's regime. It makes his performance all the more frightening. There are some great photographic moments, particularly a carriage chase and a scene on a mountain tram. Under the hands of George Cukor, this film (based upon a Swedish film that starred Ingrid Bergman) is a must see, whether you are a Crawford fan or not.

preppy-3 This takes place in Sweden. Anna Holm (Joan Crawford) is a blackmailer with a disfiguring scar on her face. Because of the scar she hates herself and everybody else. She meets Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt) who lives beyond his means and needs her help. She gets her face fixed by kind Dr. Gustaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas). She's happy and free--but can't escape her evil past completely.Strange movie. It's well-made with top MGM production values and starts off as an interesting psychological drama. However, after Crawford's face is fixed, the psychological angle is dropped and it turns into another one of her women pictures. That's not a bad thing (I actually like womens pictures) but it started out so differently--and more interesting. Still it is a good movie and looks incredible. Also director George Cukor somehow got Crawford to underplay her role and it works beautifully. For once she reins in her tendency to over emote and gives a thoughtful good performance. The rest of the cast is fine except for Marjorie Main who seems WAY out of place as a Swedish woman! Still it's worth catching. I give it a 7.

jzappa George Cukor casts a beautifully nourish climate, setting this edgy drama in Stockholm, opening on a late night in a rural Swedish tavern where Conrad Veidt, playing a ritzy gentleman, hosts a party. When the tavern will no longer stretch his credit, he enraptures Joan Crawford, who engenders the feeling of the entire movie as the seriously scarred owner, into signing his check. Crawford is shortly revealed to be a cruel blackmailer. After a woman succumbs to her threats, Crawford hatefully demands more money because the woman is beautiful. The woman, played by glacial Osa Massen, is at first frightened by Crawford, but when the heartless blackmailer loses herself in a reverie talking about love, Massen maliciously shines a light on her face. When weighing Crawford's performance in A Woman's Face against her Oscar-winning one in Mildred Pierce, she gave great performances in each despite Mildred Pierce being a lesser film, nevertheless in this brooding film, she is more effectual in her self-discipline, which was one thing she had that Bette Davis didn't. Her character's internal wounds emerging through her communicative and incidentally beautiful eyes and crushed gaze. (In spite of her character's horrendous disfigurement, she remains tremendously beautiful.) Seeing the scene in which her disfigured face is shown for the first time when she takes her hat off, as if she were expecting a reaction of horror from Veidt, and absorbing the true sorrow in her eyes and lips which, pertaining to her character, shows accidentally her cynical notions, the real actress owes the reality of her portrayal's nuances to her own chaotic personality.There is a share of comparatively sluggish conformity that Cukor occasionally allows to peek around the corner, such as the oft-used device of telling the story through flashbacks from a courtroom of assorted caricatures, lending to its stock usage of Melvin Douglas, as per his usual, delivering a likable performance as a dashing good guy. robe the criminality allowed in a 1941 film. Crawford goes to Conrad Veidt, who by this time in the story temporarily lost touch with her, and he in a roundabout way tells her that his very old, very wealthy uncle is leaving everything to his four-year-old grandson, although if something happens to the child, Veidt himself will become heir to everything. The concept is then initiated, as Crawford poses as a new governess for the boy, who Cukor ruthlessly presents as one of the most adorable little kids in the history of movies.This intriguing stranger of a movie is film noir that, in the face of its obedience to convention, rises above said genre by unfolding with sympathy and hope. Film noir, done right anyway, is unyielding and severe. Film noir illustrates the soul of nature inside, the unwitting impulses of the characters, their material depths, jealousy, greed, resentment, deceit, and all known vices of the unaware, which can show in two ways, a beautiful way and an evil way. The film's central character is a misunderstood woman in the halfway point of a blackmail mob and as a result living on the underside of a world that has rejected her, hence it has to be measured as such. Cukor utilizes simplicity in his manipulation of the film's world through her mind's eye, employing lighting, things positioned on the scarred side of her face, tossing a shard of light on top of her open eye after an operation and other such subtleties. The suspense is fluent, we want to see her unwrap the gauze, in many respects, and that uncomplicated idea steers the whole film. This is my first Cukor film, and I see that he is a very able director. His production values in 1941 are comparable to today's. The film's music score is, save for the conventional closing, very effective and not at all trite.