A Woman's Face

Adapting a 1938 Swedish film which starred Ingrid Bergman before her move to Hollywood, George Cukor’s A Woman’s Face showcases the extraordinary craftsmanship which had come to define not only MGM but the work of director Cukor, whose subtle extravagance wasn’t a natural match for noir (still, he would go on to give us Gaslight, 1944, and A Double Life, 1947). Against a backdrop of gorgeous sets (Barring’s apartment with the decorative ceiling tiles, the nightclub’s surreal forestry decor) and Bronislau Kaper’s soft, moody score, the film uses courtroom witness testimonies as flashbacks to introduce Anna Holm (Joan Crawford), the head of a blackmailing gang whose disfigured face (burned in a fire) has made her bitter and self-protective, that is until she meets plastic surgeon Gustaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas), whose unfaithful wife Vera (Osa Massen) is Anna’s latest blackmail target. If Segert had hoped that repairing Anna’s face would eliminate her criminal tendencies, he’d be disappointed because by now she’s fallen in love with the rakish Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt), who winds her into an inheritance plot that will involve a fake identity and child murder. Snowy mountains tower over the third act as the plot unfolds at Barring Hall, Torsten’s family estate where Cukor and famed production designer Cedric Gibbons create a thrilling winter ambience in which the tension of a cable car scene equals even Hitchcock’s greatest work.