More on A Woman's Face
For all my gushing about Thief of Bagdad and all my "unf unf Veidt" stuff, I still can't get A Woman's Face out of my head. The themes of that damn film keep haunting me. The scarred woman deemed "ugly", her personality, her struggles with power and the temptations she's offered, both for good and for evil. I say "good and evil" because it's that
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And yeah, it is interesting that the kids were something that helped her feel more kindly disposed towards humanity, especially since it's children who can also be the cruellest. Hell, I was just reading about some neurological study on murderers whose frontal lobes were on the level of eight-year-olds. I wonder if the whole healed-by-kids thing was an attempt to show that she had some motherly instincts and that's why she couldn't kill a child--like she remarks to Torsten at the start of the attic scene: "I'm a woman", as if that was something that would automatically make her less capable of murdering a child. One does wonder if it would've been easier for her to kill some rich old guy. But what it makes it extra different with a child is that a child represents something new, represents hope, represents innocence, all things that she kind of has hopes for at that point in her life. So the child kind of comes to represent everything that she could be, and if she kills everything she could be, she would also kill the potential in herself for rebirth. (Layers, man! Layers!)
Even though what made the film really effective was that one could believe (or at least I could believe) she could've tossed the kid out of the lift. That scene was pretty powerful because she was seriously considering and at one point, she didn't do anything to stop the kid from climbing about, as if she was hoping the kid would just plunge to death on his own.
I love how, in general, you are never quite sure of what goes on in her head, because that leaves you so much stuff to speculate on--something I always love about good writing. And that's also what makes me wonder about the OOC stuff she says in the end about wanting to be normal. I wonder if she is projecting her hopes out again, because it is a pretty chaotic place she is in at the moment, hanging there waiting to be judged, not knowing if she will walk free or spend the rest of her life in prison or if she will be executed for murder. Now that I think about it, it's the sort of situation in which someone might say stuff that would sound very out of character. Or it might be one of those flashes any outsider sometimes gets, wondering what it would be like to be normal because being an outsider hurts too much. Even if they would never truly want to become normal and/or would be rubbish at it if they tried.
SO MANY THOUGHTS OMG. Thanks again for commenting, because now I'm plunged into thinking about this movie again and discovering even more layers!
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Ah, that's a good point, that they might've been hinting at maternal instincts. I didn't put that together, but it might well be! And I think you're right that it's different because a child represents all the things she has hope for and could never have in her life before. And killing the child would not only be the decisive act that would set her on a path away from that, but it would be like "killing" those hopes and that part of herself as well. Ooh, that's really interesting stuff. (eta: I forgot to say this, but another aspect of that could be her genuine concern over him being burned by the sun lamp and getting "scarred for life," like she was when she was young. Like in that moment she really realizes what it would mean to destroy/scar everything the child represents as well as the child himself. As if the threat of a scar like her own forces her to see this more clearly than the threat of death would, even.)
Yeah, I noticed the same thing in that scene! Like it would've been easier for her if he managed to fall over the side on his own. Because I could believe, too, that she might've been able to do it - even though she was obviously having an internal struggle, and it would have (maybe) been simpler for her if he'd fallen due to her passive negligence rather than her actively pushing him out.
The shift in tone of that last scene did feel pretty abrupt. I actually like your interpretation, that the situation was affecting her or that she was sort of fantasizing about being normal, better than what they probably intended. And it was easier for me to believe that the doctor would be attracted to (or at least intrigued by) her than the other way around. :|
Talking about it is awesome because MOAR LAYERS do keep getting uncovered, just when I think there couldn't be any more. Such a neat film. Thanks again for pointing me in its direction. *hugs*
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Also, since I'm rambling anyway, I heard they were remaking The Man Who Laughs (with some actors I don't know much about) and then I went "NOOOOO!" and then started thinking of what sort of modern version I could accept (if it could even be made to work with sound, which... er... I doubt). And then I realised that oh shit, John would probably be one of the few actors who could pull Gwynplaine off because of the whole having-to-act-only-with-your-eyes thing. Holy shit, he'd be good o_O
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Are they really? How odd. :| It wouldn't bear much resemblance to the original, I imagine, since the sensibility of a modern film would be totally different. But OMG, John would be pretty fantastic in that role. God, why can't that happen? *sadness*
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*squishes*
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