It's not every classic-era Hollywood film that has as its heroine a thief, blackmailer, murderer and intended infanticide (as well, of course, as a poet and musician - this IS Joan Crawford), but this isn't your average classic-era Hollywood film. it is one of Cukor's best, and echoes its theme of transformation - from scarred freak to beauty; from independent transgressor to adoring wife; from poor daughter of drunk to frequenter of chateaux; from warped criminal to protector of innocence - in its very form, as it moves from rich melodrama to unbelievably tense Hitchcockian thriller, in a way Cukor would do later with 'Gaslight'; or in the way it turns from christian allegory (Barring identifies himself with the Devil; Segert the 'scientist' (like Elaine Benes' pediatrist boyfriend, this plastic surgeon has ideas above his station) as Frankenstein/God; and Anna is repeatedly referred to as an angel, not always ironically) to a savage critique of the cinema and its assumptions, or vice versa.
Every great director has an overriding theme he asserts and develops throughout his oeuvre. The common element in Cukor's films is his recurrent interest in the theatricality of everyday life, the way identity is conceived as a performance, to be constantly negotiated through an artificial society. Think of Eliza becoming a 'lady' in 'My Fair Lady'. 'A Woman's face' opens with a court-bill proclaiming the case to be tried; it is like a play-bill, and Cukor pulls back to reveal a group of potential punters reading it. The trial itself is theatricalised, from the shoving, gasping audience, to the ritualistic introduction of the dramatis personae, while the film is full of role-playing and deception, where costume is of crucial importance; of playwrights devising plays for actresses (poets or not).
This elaborate artifice points to the pathos of the main theme, that of a potentially beautiful woman hideously scarred and mocked by her peers. It is a cliche that good looks can mask a vicious heart, and vice versa, but Anna's case is more complex. In a world of appearances, where one's character is literally judged by the face one presents to the world, than Anna must play her role. As her face is horribly disfigured, than so must her soul, her body reuniting the division enacted by Dorian Gray. Likewise, when her face is restored, or, more accurately, recreated, she becomes a nicer person. No wonder, even today, most young girls want some kind of reconstructive surgery - it's an easy ticket to moral and social improvement.
Cukor is too sympathetic to his heroines to allow this poisonous morality to stand. His film is one of the great melodramas, as he reveals the limitations of female experience in a self-interested male world. Barring picks on Anna because he sees her self-loathing can be manipulated for his own ends. Although Anna is a criminal, she is a moral force - she plays on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie; the scene where she strikes Segert has an overwhelming S&M charge, and is mirrored later when Barring whips his pursuers.
In the first half, Anna is a femme fatale, economically independent, preying on a weak middle-class. Her normalising into society, first by improving her face, is shown as an imprisonment - the barred door leading to Barring's (get it?) apartment; the hall of mirrors her identity gets lost in as she admires herself (an amazing shot); the literal prison she finds herself in after the murder; the ironic bars that overlook the seemingly redemptive talk of marriage with Segert; the uncertain ending, where Anna hasn't been acquitted yet - Cukor knows she's just exchanging one prison for another.
This sense of entrapment is embodied in the narrative, where her story is submerged in a host of others' stories, all unreliable and diminishing, reducing her to a woman's face. This wider social analysis of women's role is tied specifically to the role of actresses in the film industry, their dependence on facial beauty, their collusion in 'false' or unrealistic images of femininity - the film is full of lamps being switched on to light up women's faces, but they are harsh and exposing rather than flattering. The initially sadistic concept of disfiguring Joan Crawford becomes a sympathetic narrative of her plight.
Every great director has an overriding theme he asserts and develops throughout his oeuvre. The common element in Cukor's films is his recurrent interest in the theatricality of everyday life, the way identity is conceived as a performance, to be constantly negotiated through an artificial society. Think of Eliza becoming a 'lady' in 'My Fair Lady'. 'A Woman's face' opens with a court-bill proclaiming the case to be tried; it is like a play-bill, and Cukor pulls back to reveal a group of potential punters reading it. The trial itself is theatricalised, from the shoving, gasping audience, to the ritualistic introduction of the dramatis personae, while the film is full of role-playing and deception, where costume is of crucial importance; of playwrights devising plays for actresses (poets or not).
This elaborate artifice points to the pathos of the main theme, that of a potentially beautiful woman hideously scarred and mocked by her peers. It is a cliche that good looks can mask a vicious heart, and vice versa, but Anna's case is more complex. In a world of appearances, where one's character is literally judged by the face one presents to the world, than Anna must play her role. As her face is horribly disfigured, than so must her soul, her body reuniting the division enacted by Dorian Gray. Likewise, when her face is restored, or, more accurately, recreated, she becomes a nicer person. No wonder, even today, most young girls want some kind of reconstructive surgery - it's an easy ticket to moral and social improvement.
Cukor is too sympathetic to his heroines to allow this poisonous morality to stand. His film is one of the great melodramas, as he reveals the limitations of female experience in a self-interested male world. Barring picks on Anna because he sees her self-loathing can be manipulated for his own ends. Although Anna is a criminal, she is a moral force - she plays on the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie; the scene where she strikes Segert has an overwhelming S&M charge, and is mirrored later when Barring whips his pursuers.
In the first half, Anna is a femme fatale, economically independent, preying on a weak middle-class. Her normalising into society, first by improving her face, is shown as an imprisonment - the barred door leading to Barring's (get it?) apartment; the hall of mirrors her identity gets lost in as she admires herself (an amazing shot); the literal prison she finds herself in after the murder; the ironic bars that overlook the seemingly redemptive talk of marriage with Segert; the uncertain ending, where Anna hasn't been acquitted yet - Cukor knows she's just exchanging one prison for another.
This sense of entrapment is embodied in the narrative, where her story is submerged in a host of others' stories, all unreliable and diminishing, reducing her to a woman's face. This wider social analysis of women's role is tied specifically to the role of actresses in the film industry, their dependence on facial beauty, their collusion in 'false' or unrealistic images of femininity - the film is full of lamps being switched on to light up women's faces, but they are harsh and exposing rather than flattering. The initially sadistic concept of disfiguring Joan Crawford becomes a sympathetic narrative of her plight.