A film
review by Jamie S. Rich for CriterionConfessions.com on April 14, 2018.
Ingrid Bergman teamed with director Gustaf Molander for the 1938 film A Woman's Face. Written by Gösta Stevens, adapted from a play by Francis De Croisset, A Woman's Face is a melodrama with a
touch of noir. Bergman plays the villain of the piece - or at least, half a
villain. At the start of the picture, she is the femme fatale of a blackmail
ring, though her role tends to be more on the planning side than seduction. A
childhood fire that killed both her parents has left half of her face burned,
and also left her bitter against the world.
Bergman
plays Anna Holm with a surprising anger, and also a pronounced vulnerability.
She regularly reaches her hand up to her face, protectively shielding her
scars. She projects her rage outwardly, pushing her crew to be tougher on their
victims, and ends up taking one of the cases over herself. While visiting the victim
Vera Wegert (Karin Carlson-Kavli) Anna
is caught by Vera’s husband Dr. Allan Wegert (Anders Henrikson), who by no small coincidence is a doctor who
fixed similar scarring for soldiers after World War I. He offers to operate on
Anna's face, hoping it will warm her heart and inspire her to turn her life
around. At first, she ignores the opportunity the healed visage offers, joining
a previous scheme to cheat six-year-old Lars-Erik
Barring (Göran Bernhard) out of his
inheritance, but posing as his governess using the name Anna Paulsson helps Anna
embrace love -particularly when she finds it with one of his uncles Harald Berg
(Gunnar Sjöberg).
Anna's
transformation from hard-bitten criminal to tenderhearted softie is a
predictable one, but it's made believable by Ingrid Bergman's performance. She
instinctively understands the various stages of Anna's metamorphosis and her
work actually stands apart from the script, which I think expected the switch
to be more automatic. Despite the fairly standard plotting, A Woman's Face avoids the treacle, never
quite giving in to more conventional urges, instead settling on an ending that
is more bittersweet than one might expect.
Blogger’s
comment: After the childhood fire that severely disfigured Anna Holm, she
became a sociopath. Bitter at having lost her parents, her childhood and her
beauty she became the leader of a ring of thieves specializing in extortion.
Only interested in control and winning, she was willing to lie cheat and steal
while feeling no guilt pain or remorse, having no conscience and only a hole
where her heart should be. The problem with A
Woman’s Face is that it makes the assumption that after Dr. Wegert had
restored her beauty, Anna was able to transform her personality. Sadly the real
world does not work that way, and it is more likely that Anna would have
continued her criminal life, enjoying more success now that her disfigurement
had been replaced by physical beauty. This film confirms that society in
general is woefully uneducated where sociopaths and psychopaths are concerned.
Labels:
drama, Ingrid Bergman
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