A Woman's Face (1941) - The Unlabeled Noir

This blog is reposted from another movie site where I published it today.

1941 is the year that is widely assumed to be the year that the Film Noir genre started. It is thought as such because of the releases of The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra, both from Warner Bros. but there was another film that year that could qualify as a noir, and that is A Woman's Face, an MGM production starring Joan Crawford and directed by George Cukor. Despite the semi-happy ending, and two or three lighter scenes in the second half of the film, there is no denying that this is a noir. At times the noir feeling is so intese that one might forget that MGM did the fim. At the time of the film's release, it was Joan Crawford's most sinister role. She plays Anna Holm, a hardhearted blackmailer with severe scarring on her face that is later removed through plastic surgery. In one early scene, when a female blackmaling victim laughs at her mockingly, Crawford's character repeatedly slaps her over the face and rips the pearls from the woman's neck. Many of the images in the film are filled with shadows and darkness, furthering the conclusion that this film is an origin of noir. If Crawford's character is ruthless, then Conrad Veigt's character, Torsten Barring, is downright demonic. He recruits Crawford to help him in his evil scheme to kill a young boy who stands in his way of a massve inheritence. His behavior in one scene where he says that the devil is his god is particularally evident of his depravity. Even the supporting players are given darker roles; Marjorie Main turns in a startalingly sinister performance as a suspicious housekeeper. There are two major susence setpieces both involving the yong boy. In the first, the boy and Crawford are in a ski lift going over trecherous waterfalls. Crawford fiddles with the lock that would send the boy to his death but finds she cannot do it. It is a sequence worthy of a Hitchcock film. The other sequence is a sleigh ride gone awry near the end of the film, as Veight is heading toward the falls plotting to throw the boy overboard, with Crawford (now Veight's enemy and wielding a pistol hping to kill him) and Melvyn Douglas in another sleigh trying to rescue the child. It keeps a viewer at the edge of the seat. So, all this being said, it is hard to say why this film is always overlooked when the origins of noir are talked about, for it truly is a trailblazer in the field of film noir.