A Woman's Face

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.

There's a rather intriguing dramatic quality to this American version of an original Swedish production (from a French play, Francis de Croisset's Il etait une fois) which had Ingrid Bergman as star. In a story of a woman's handicap and final regeneration.

The film is more strange than good, yet its self-conscious treatment of the politics of beauty seems eerily prescient.

Despite some rather silly dialogue, scripted by the usually reliable Donald Ogden Stewart from a French play, Cukor's civilised handling of the actors and his often expressionist visuals lend credence to the tale, with atmosphere thick and juicy enough to cut with a knife.

Too bad that the director, George Cukor, doesn't have a little more feeling for the loony baroque; the story is treated much too soberly.

As melodrama, sheer and simple, the story behind Anna Holm's murder trial is often superbly effective, but when it attempts to become a study of emotional anguish it merely betrays the essential hokum of which the film is constructed.