There is a scene in A Woman’s Face in which Joan Crawford’s Anna Holm threatens to push a small child off a cable car into the roaring ravine below. Because it’s Joan Crawford, we actually believe she might do it.
So many of Crawford’s characters didn’t care what others thought about them, and at least on screen, you got the same impression from Crawford the actress. And so even though she is the sympathetic star here—playing a formerly disfigured woman torn between criminal associates from her past and the plastic surgeon (Melvyn Douglas) who repaired her facial scar—you never feel as if Crawford is playing for the audience’s sympathy. Having promised a devilish romantic partner (Conrad Veidt) that she would pose as a governess to his little nephew, then look for a chance to, well, erase the boy from the family inheritance, Anna isn’t the true villain of the film. But she, and Crawford, are just villainous enough.
She’s also delicious. You can see the early seeds of the camp phase of her career being planted here, what with the vicious way she slaps around Osa Massen, playing a blackmail victim, in one confrontation. She also dramatically droops her mouth, as if her scar makeup wasn’t doing enough work, and occasionally walks with a damaged hitch. But none of that is meant to attract sympathy; rather, the affectations harden her, putting up a wall between Anna and those who would try to get too close.
As a whole, A Woman’s Face is almost too complicated for its own good. (The movie is based on a play by Francois de Croisset and was previously brought to the screen in 1938 in Sweden, with Ingrid Bergman in the lead role.) Structured as a series of court testimonies in a trial against Anna, the movie’s Rashomon-like structure and extensive cast of characters are surprisingly awkwardly juggled by director George Cukor, who was no stranger to elaborate ensemble pictures (including The Women, also with Crawford). Still, Cukor does stage a crackerjack sleigh chase in the climax (the movies need more of those), while overall managing to capture Crawford at what feels like a crucial juncture of her career, just as the gloves were really coming off.
