New Picture

A Woman's Face (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Year ago a handful of U.S. foreign filmaddicts saw limpid Ingrid Bergman play a horribly disfigured heroine in , Swedish production called A Woman's Face. Their joyous squeals got through to jawboned, saucer-eyed Joan Crawford, an actress who had played the G out of Glamor and was on the prowl for a seamy vehicle. Miss Crawford saw A Woman's Face, gulped, took the plunge.

Throughout the first half of the Crawford version of this film, her appearance ; calculated to arrest Big Ben. A great wen clings to the side of Cinestar Crawford's face, distorting it to a grimace, pulling her eye into a squint.* Once revealed, it is seldom shown again. It does not have to be.

As Anna Holm, Miss Crawford has borne her disfigurement since childhood, frightful to look at, she has turned crimnal to take revenge on a society which doesn't want her. Then she encounters a man who is not repelled by her ugliness--criminal aristocrat named Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt).

Love for Barring and a chance encounter with a famed plastic surgeon (Melvyn Douglas) remake Anna's life. After a stern course of surgery she emerges as beautiful as she was meant to be--and free to pursue her guilty calling under a perfect camouflage. A murder is planned for the purpose of removing the one bar to the aristocrat's inheritance of a fortune. By her eventual revolt against this slaughter Anna rejoins the world which had cast her out.

Two choices were open to the makers of A Woman's Face. They could turn out a study of a woman outcast and her rejuvenation; or they could emphasize the play's melodrama, suspense and horror. Producer Victor Saville (Goodbye, Mr. Chips) and Director George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story) chose the latter. With a tight, smooth script they have spun a slick thriller whose box-office ending is but a slight drawback to a suspenseful 106 minutes.

In her ugly-duckling role Joan Crawford wins no shining laurels for dramatic acting. But she fits competently into her niche among a frieze of capable performers.

Says she: "My main interest was in getting a good story. If it weren't for the scar, there wouldn't be any story. . . . There are too many pretty women in pictures, anyhow."

* Apparently preferring to reserve this vision for customers only, M.G.M. refused to release for publication.

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