A Woman’s Face (1941)

(On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s easy to see in bits and pieces what makes A Woman’s Face a bit better than most melodramas of the time. Despite a fundamentally unlikely premise blending organized crime, blackmail, disfigurement, child murder and a framing device set in a courtroom, the film gets quite a bit of mileage from Joan Crawford’s convincing performance in facial scarring makeup. The film wrings extra tension from the back-and-forth between the events of the story and the courtroom framing device, while George Cukor keeps things grounded despite the unlikely narrative and the Swedish setting. (But then again, the film is a remake of a Swedish original starring Ingrid Bergman.)  While I’m not much of a Crawford fan, she’s quite good here and A Woman’s Face remains an above-average 1940s melodrama.