A Woman's Face (1941):

 

 

Possibly Joan Crawford's greatest role – even better than her Academy Award winning portrayal as Mildred Pierce in the film of the same name – A Woman's Face finds her portraying Anna Holm, a small time criminal with a hideously scarred face. After she receives a life-changing facial reconstruction operation, a former associate (Torsten Barring, played by Conrad Veidt) ropes her in to becoming the au pair of his uncle's youngest nephew. With orders to kill the boy, Anna has an attack of conscience and cannot complete her task.

Told in a series of flashbacks from the courtroom where she is giving evidence against Barring, the films narrative unfolds and is pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. Director George Cukor, who had previously worked with Crawford on comedy feature The Women, famously got the actress to repeat her lines over and over, resulting in an emotionless, monotone account of the events when the it was finally filmed.

Cukor's desire to achieve this effect and Crawford's subsequent performance make the film incredibly sombre and perfectly in fitting with the plot. In A Woman's Face, despite the fact that the majority of the action is displayed within the flashback sequences, for the strength of their performances it is those scenes within the courtroom that are the most entertaining.