Comments | snowgrouse: More on A Woman's Face

snowgrouse

More on A Woman's Face

Aug 30, 2012 22:59

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 ( Read more... )

joan crawford, reviews/commentaries, movies, meta, a woman's face, conrad veidt, life the universe & everything

Comments 11

therru August 31 2012, 15:51:55 UTC

Skål, tamejfan.

snowgrouse August 31 2012, 16:10:24 UTC

I wonder if that's what the characters said in the original Swedish version with Ingrid Bergman! I hear it was nowhere near as good, though.

therru August 31 2012, 16:41:06 UTC

I'm afraid I've never seen it, so I can't help you with that...

sandsdream November 19 2012, 09:21:34 UTC

It *hurts* me how right Torsten is when he mocks her for having become kind and loving towards her fellow men

Your pointing this out reminds me - I had thoughts about this bit as well. Because like you're saying here, he has a point. He's right, in the way that only the devil or bitter human experience can really be. And yet she's ultimately able to resist him. I wonder if that has something to do with the use of children in the film, in a sort of innocence vs. bitter human experience way. Because you see how touched she is by the first child she sees in the street after undergoing the surgery, and then by the child she becomes governess of. It's odd, though, because if her faith in humanity is restored by these shows of sweetness and innocence, that's all still completely colored by her appearance. Children are often the first to judge/be frightened by "ugliness" or difference. The reason these children probably like her is because she's "pretty," as the boy keeps pointing out, but it's as if (as you said) her external healing is ( ... )

snowgrouse November 19 2012, 09:39:15 UTC

OMG YOU TALKED TO ME ABOUT THIS FILM <3 It's absolutely not tl;dr! *hugs* Especially compared to the amount of babble I have in my head about this movie, as you can see ( ... )

sandsdream November 19 2012, 10:11:14 UTC

<333

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 ( ... )

snowgrouse November 19 2012, 10:30:47 UTC

IT IS AN AWESOME FILM <3 Thank you so much for chatting to me about it. I'm sorry I haven't been around on IM more, because I've been trying to kick myself into polishing the current Thief of Bagdad fic thing I've got going. Of course, that movie hasn't got nearly as many layers, but Connie's Masterliness more than makes up for it and I have no choice but to obey and serve him with porn. *nods firmly* I was just about to make some sort of gratitude post of having had my historical period fetishes served by both Simmy in The Devil's Whore and Connie in Bagdad ( ... )

Thread 8