A Woman’s Face (1941)
It contains one fascinating idea — the inside should resemble the outside — and that the inside was in fact meant to resemble the outside, and that somehow the inside and outside are the same. It’s a fantasy, and really, the quintessential one, the stuff of Shakespearean comedy. I’ve certainly known enough beautiful young men to understand that beauty and truth are often two very different things. And yet one can’t help hoping. In A Woman’s Face Joan Crawford starts out as physically ugly. And by this movie’s standards, she’s therefore not really a woman. But after all, it’s only movie ugliness (which is all one can imagine Crawford consenting to). The terrible burn scar on her face looks like someone attached it with Scotch Tape. I did try and like this movie, but Crawford sticks in my craw. She’s best at the beginning when she’s vile and angry — because it seems to come naturally to her. But not so much after the transformation to ‘beautiful and good’ takes place. And that's this movie’s unpleasant fiction. Crawford submits to 12 operations. Melvyn Douglas is her doctor and the man who sees the beauty inside her. Finally, with calculated slowness, it seems, he peels off the final bandage. Lo and behold — she’s beautiful! Meaning she’s Joan Crawford — and from then on Crawford does the same thing she always does: act quiet, and martyred, and underestimated, smiling sheepishly, and showing off those noble cheekbones and that straight yet sensuous mouth, that says — kiss me if you want to, I’m beautiful — but honestly I don’t know it. So A Woman’s Face is perfect for Crawford because she gets to act like a woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful, because she’s never been beautiful before. But at this point the fiction becomes repellent. On a feminist level, the idea that a woman who is beautiful is nicer inside — whereas ugly women are mean — is abhorrent. So I guess no one is attracted to an ugly woman -- whatever that is -- men, women, and even children just turn away? After the operation Crawford is so grateful when people suddenly turn toward her and fall a little in love. It is suggested that this is the way it should be for women. If not, they turn bad, like meat left to rot in the sun. That’s the other miserable lie: that if people love us, we become good people. Well I certainly think it’s true in some cases. Sure, lots of people are mean because they’ve had traumatic childhoods (someone kicks them, and they kick the dog). And this is certainly today’s creed: the mantra of victim politics. (But it was James Baldwin who said; “There is something very safe about being a Negro…… at one point, somewhere inside yourself, you have to realise you’re responsible for what happens to you. You cannot blame anybody for it.” This from a man who was very gay and very black at a time when both identities were reviled, is perhaps -- in today's present cultural climate -- a little impossible for us to understand.) However, for each person we meet who was treated badly, and ends up badly, we can point to 3 others who were treated equally badly and turned out just fine. Ignoring that constitutes the sanctimonious posturing that makes this kind of melodrama somewhat execrable; A Woman’s Face wants us to feel that women must be loved for their beauty, and that being loved for their beauty is good for them, and if we were all just kinder to people they would all turn out fine. But I’m a sucker for Crawford’s final lines. She explains that her need to be a wife and mother is ubiquitous -- that every woman wants it -- “I want to have a home and children, I want to go to market, and cheat the grocer, and fight with the landlord — I want to belong to the human race!” These lines are as self evident as ‘all men are created equal’ — and just as toxic in a certain context. I’ll explain something to you — not because it’s such a terribly complex idea, but because most people seem resistant to it for some reason (I think it’s because they think I’m trying to spoil their fun). This movie, like all manipulative melodrama, is quite persuasive, but what you have to do is separate the candy coating from the poison inside. And that may ruin it for you; it always seems to, when I try and explain what I think these old movies — and many new ones — are really saying. It’s like when I tell people Cary Grant was gay —‘No, I don’t want to hear — you’re ruining it for me.’ I understand; and I'm not saying Crawford's goodness is unbelievable because she apparently used to beat her children in real life. (I do take exception to Faye Dunaway though — she blamed the fags for ruining her career because we loved Mommy Dearest -- but it’s not our fault you actually believed your own bad acting in a camp classic was Oscar-worthy!) No — I don’t care what stars do off screen, what Crawford’s projecting is simply fake; and it's what this movie is about — that fakeness, the beauty that's only skin deep. It’s what attracts us, and what, sadly, we really want, or think we do. But if you know it’s morally bankrupt at the centre, it's quite alright to still want it. Honestly. I give you permission. As long as you separate the two, and see them for that they are, you can still lick the sugar on the outside no matter how toxic it is at the centre. Last weekend I saw a waiter on Church Street who I’ve lately been obsessed with -- it’s mainly about the way his fine plump young ass meets his furry thick legs — (there I said it, it’s quite often about that with me). I was trying to gather up the courage to give him a compliment and tell him how hot he is. (Oh yes and it also has to do with the fact that he is so gay, a total queen, such a girly boy, and so snooty too). Anyway, I told my friend -- and once he figured out who I was talking about, he said — “No, no don’t go there, no, bad news.” I pleaded — ‘But why? Why?” And finally he said..”Drugs…” as if that shouldn’t have been self evident — and I said nothing to that young man, probably will say nothing, and it’s probably better that way. But I will still yearn to touch that outside, to feel his fine young arrogance close to me — in fact I’m fantasizing about it now! Because at least I will know the consequences and will be going into ‘it,’ so to speak, with eyes wide open. And don’t knock empty pleasure; it’s like leaving the lights on when the barn doors are open, and enjoying watching the horses having quite the party as they’re on their way out.
