MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: EN KVINNAS ANSIKTE / A WOMAN’S FACE (1938)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Tuesday, January 3, 2023

EN KVINNAS ANSIKTE / A WOMAN’S FACE (1938)

Swedish audiences must have had quite the pleasurable shock watching Ingrid Bergman (already an established star at 22) play Bad Girl in a story where looks = character. So naturally, Bergman’s been disfigured since childhood; unfit for anything but villainy, part of a criminal gang of blackmailers now caught mid-job at the home of a (wait for it) plastic surgeon. With encouragement from the doctor’s unfaithful wife (her secret love letters the reason Bergman was there), an operation is arranged to turn her monstrous face into angelic beauty. Will it also change her character in time for the second half of the film? Or will a new start merely set up a better scam, one involving an expendable little boy she’s just been hired to take care of? Yikes! And you’re not the only one to note the dramatic possibilities. M-G-M snapped this one up for a 1941 remake with Joan Crawford. There, the first half is elaborated (bigger criminal gang/futuristic operating room), but the second half gets gooey in comparison with the Swedish original. So, swings and ‘roundabouts with both worth seeing. But when her young charge says goodnight with a spontaneous hug, and Bergman must push her tussled hair back into place on her recently perfected face, Crawford doesn’t stand a chance. No one would. Best print found on Criterion’s Bergman in Sweden series.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, George Cukor’s M-G-M remake with Crawford. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/womans-face-1941.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: Three years after Cukor directed the Crawford remake, he remade another Euro-hit, this time with Ingrid Bergman stepping in to win the first of her three Oscars for GASLIGHT/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/05/gaslight-angel-street-1940.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaslight-1944.html OR: Can it be coincidence that Conrad Veidt, villain in the Crawford remake, had his own disfigured face role in a classic late silent of Victor Hugo’s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS/’28? https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/man-who-laughs-1928.html

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Tuesday, January 3, 2023

EN KVINNAS ANSIKTE / A WOMAN’S FACE (1938)

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