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Very well executed

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Very disappointing...

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Joan Crawford (Anna) is on trial for the murder of her boyfriend Conrad Veidt (Torsten). We follow her story in flashback as told by selected witnesses before the judge makes his decision.This is an entertaining film with many memorable scenes, eg, Anna contemplating killing the child Richard Nichols (Lars-Erik) by unlocking the safety gate as he leans against it while travelling on a cable car. You just know that she's capable and the scene is very tense. Another is the scene where Crawford has gone round to blackmail Osa Massen (Vera) about having an affair and a situation unfolds where Crawford slaps Massen. She does it several times and she really means it! The main characters all do well with Crawford stealing the show as the bitter woman with a scarred face who has reconciled herself to a life of blackmailing others. Crawford's performance allows the audience to sympathize with this rather nasty character as the film evolves. The minor characters are OK but the film does contain an extremely annoying Donald Meek who plays 'Herman' the barman. He plays for comedy. He's not funny.It's an engaging film - far-fetched but go along with it and it will entertain you.

A Woman's Face is a trashy, pseudo horror movie like film but one presented as an A-picture melodrama. I've watched A Woman's Face five times as of writing this review and gets better every time I watch it. Within the last year I've felt the motivation to watch the film three times, something which is almost unheard of for me; this movie is that good. I've now decided, screw it, this is my favourite Joan Crawford film and considering there's tough competition from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mildred Pierce and The Women, that's saying a lot. Every major cast member in A Woman's Face is superb. I know that sounds like a generalization but it's true. Firstly there's Conrad Veidt as Torsten Barring. I adore every second this man is on screen; he's just so delightfully sinister but in the most absorbingly charming manner - I'm swept of my feet by his presence. I can completely buy into the romance he shares with Anna Holm (Crawford) because he looks past her facial disfigurement and is unbothered by it. Melvyn Douglas is the other great charmer of the cast, whom I've yet to see paired with an actress who he didn't share great chemistry. Ossa Massen, Reginald Owen, Albert Bassermann, Marjorie Main (unrecognisable here) and Donald Meek are also all equally memorable and stand in the strong characterisations of their roles. Likewise on re-watching look out for the moments of foreshadowing ("You love children? I loathe them").Then there's Crawford herself in a once in a life time role as a facially disfigured woman, a part few actresses would be prepared to play. Her character of Anna Holm only engages in deceitful acts because of society's mistreatment of her since childhood but is otherwise good at heart. Anna tries to make the best for herself and doesn't dwell into a victimhood complex ("I don't care for pity ether"); she runs her own tavern, pursues different talents and less virtuously is involved in criminality. Regardless throughout the film my heart pours out for the poor woman and yet even with the disfigurement I still find Crawford to be incredibly beautiful in this film, nor does the disfigurement ever take away from the asset that is her stunning body. If anything the moment in which Anna returns from a shopping trip and is wearing a very excessive blouse to take attention away from her face is the one moment in the film in which her character comes off to me as pathetic sight.A Woman's Face is one of the few thrillers George Cukor directed with echoes of Hitchcock throughout, such as the shots of the smelter plant and a waterfall in the background (similar to the scenery in films such as Foreign Correspondent), to the film's suspenseful scenes such as that atop the cable car. This sequence itself is absent of any music, simply allowing the sound of the nearby waterfall and the smelter plant increase the tension while the film's climax on the other hand offers a sort of Ben-Hur on sleds finale. Since I consider this film far superior to Hitchcock's thriller offering that year of Suspicion, Cukor out Hitchcocked Hitchcock. With Cukor being one of the great masters of his trade, the cinematography of A Woman's Face is a feast for the eyes. Technically speaking, the scenes at the hospital and Anna's subsequent unbandaging are my favourite part of the film. Along with A Woman's Face and the 1934 medical drama Men In White, it makes me wonder if it's just me or do medical interiors and apparatuses make for some of the best subjects to capture on film.Being a remake of a Swedish film, there's something somewhat unconventional about A Woman's Face for a Hollywood film. The movie does manage to capture the essence of its Northern European setting (despite much of the cast supporting American accents) and offers a slice of Swedish culture with its dancing sequence.I consider 1941 to be the greatest year in history of cinema. The output of this single year is the jealous vain of entire decades and A Woman's Face just adds to this. Melodrama seems to have a bad reputation for no good reason. Like many things it can be done well and done poorly. A Woman's Face represents the old Hollywood melodrama tailored to perfection.

Joan Crawford's third film directed by George Cukor, "A Woman's Face" (1941), was something of a risky proposition for the queen of the MGM lot. In those two previous films, "The Women" ('39) and "Susan and God" ('40), she had portrayed characters who, if not exactly likable (indeed, her Crystal in "The Women" can be seen as the bitch prototype), were at least sophisticated and beautiful. Her Anna Holm in the '41 film is something else, though. The embittered 27-year-old leader of a small gang of blackmailers when we first meet her, Anna also sports a disfiguring scar on the right side of her face, the result of a household fire when she was 5. She soon teams up with fellow criminal Torsten Barring (the always wonderful Conrad Veidt, who would again be paired with Crawford in 1943's "Above Suspicion") to ply her trade in her adopted city of Stockholm, and, for love of him, undergoes a dozen facial surgeries performed by Dr. Gustaf Segert (the always dependable Melvyn Douglas, who had previously appeared with Crawford in "The Gorgeous Hussy" and "The Shining Hour" and who would later perform with her in "They All Kissed the Bride"). A new and beautiful puss softens Anna's outlook on the world, although she still agrees to Torsten's current scheme: to become the governess of his 4-year-old cousin and then murder the cute little moppet so as to come into an inheritance....A fascinating story, told via multiple flashback POVs during Anna's trial for murder, "A Woman's Face" is surely much more than a "woman's picture." The film has been lavishly produced and features gorgeous sets and excellent special FX (most notably seen during that cable car sequence). Cukor's direction is impeccable, and his use of superimposed images (as in that weaving-dance number) is a thing of real beauty. The film boasts at least three truly memorable scenes: Anna's imminent murder of her young ward in a cable car above a raging torrent; the impressively shot horse-drawn sleigh chase that culminates the film (and which somehow brought to this viewer's mind no less a scene than the chariot race in "Ben-Hur"!); and, perhaps best, the attic scene in which Torsten reveals to Anna just how evil he really is. Conrad Veidt is at his silky, menacing best in this scene; easily a more evil figure than the one he would so memorably play the following year in "Casablanca." That film's Major Strasser was wicked for political and nationalistic reasons; Barring is evil just for the hell of it. "The world belongs to the devil, and I know how to serve him if I can only get the power," he tells Anna in this most chilling encounter. Everyone's favorite Nazi portrayer, Veidt (who it should be remembered fled from Nazi Germany in 1934, along with his Jewish wife) here portrays a much more casual form of nastiness. He is simply brilliant, and easily steals the film, despite Crawford's and Douglas' fine portrayals, and those of such wonderful character actors as Albert Basserman, Osa Massen, Reginald Owen, Marjorie Main, Donald Meek, George Zucco, Robert Warwick and Henry Daniell. In all, a risky proposition for Joan Crawford that paid off marvelously!

Joan Crawford is convincingly disfigured as our story starts, and of course she get fixed up. But she's a bad egg, exploiting one guy, while living out another guy's anti-social philosophy. All of this takes place in Sweden, which is truly bizarre. It causes anything and everything memorable in the visuals, which are freed from having to depict Anytown USA, but it makes a viewer wonder why every remake since is burdened and rendered unspecific by the need to Americanize everything. There is plot, plot, plot so chatty that you could drown in it, and making matters worse is a framing device that adds zilch to the movie. The photography is occasionally nice, with odd angles and miniatures incorporated quite well. But it's overwrought without ever once drawing you in.