D: George Cukor C: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt
It might as well have been named A WOMAN’S FATE. After all, a woman’s face IS her fate. I mean, what else has she got? Joan is scarred – only slightly, I’m sure that Miss Crawford will have insisted upon that – and therefore rotten to the core. Or is it only skin-deep? We can’t wait to find out. Will she be acquitted? Will she get Melvyn Douglas, the plastic surgeon, who made her beautiful again, in the end? Only two more hours to go! You see, even though she is now good, she still has a hang-up on no-good Conrad Veidt, being the only one, who would look at her, when she was ugly. And Conrad is up to no good. In fact, he wants her to kill a child, who stands in the way of his inheritance. She readily agrees, but as she explains to the good doctor during the climactic sleigh chase: “I lied to you this afternoon. I came up here to kill that boy. But I couldn’t do it. I COULDN’T DO IT! I don’t love Torsten that much. I don’t love him at all, but now it’s too late.” The action takes place in Sweden, and as usual, the accents come and go, but as a running gag, this is really quite unnecessary, as every Joan Crawford movie is a farce. Joan: “I want to belong to the human race.” Tough luck, sister!
