A Woman's Face (George Cukor, 1941)

Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face

Anna Holm: Joan Crawford
Dr. Gustaf Segert: Melvyn Douglas
Torsten Barring: Conrad Veidt
Vera Segert: Osa Massen
Bernard Dalvik: Reginald Owen
Consul Magnus Barring: Albert Bassermann
Emma Kristiansdotter: Marjorie Main
Herman Rundvik: Donald Meek
Christina Dalvik: Connie Gilchrist
Lars-Erik: Richard Nichols
Judge: Henry Kolker
Defense Attorney: George Zucco
Public Prosecutor: Henry Daniell

Director: George Cukor
Screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart, Elliot Paul
Based on a play by Francis de Croisset
Cinematography: Robert H. Planck
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Frank Sullivan
Music: Bronislau Kaper

I don't know why the screenplay for A Woman's Face is credited as an adaptation of the play Il Était une Fois by Francis de Crosset with no mention of the 1938 Swedish film En Kvinnas Ansikte, directed by Gustaf Molander and starring Ingrid Bergman. The 1941 A Woman's Face is clearly a remake of that film, which was released in the United States in 1939. Both films are set in Sweden, when as far as I can tell, de Croisset set his play in France, and both Bergman and Joan Crawford play characters named Anna Holm. Moreover, Crawford had seen Bergman's film and pressured MGM to buy the rights to it for her. As well she should have: Although Louis B. Mayer reportedly objected to Crawford's determination to play a disfigured woman, thinking it would hurt her at the box office just as she was entering her mid-30s, a dangerous time for a female movie star, the film gave Crawford a chance to show her stuff -- to play vulnerable as well as tough. She starts off tough, as a member of a gang of blackmailers, then softens when Torsten Barring begins to woo her, apparently indifferent to her scarred face. But since he's played by Conrad Veidt, we know he's up to no good. Meanwhile, another man, the cosmetic surgeon Dr. Segert, enters Anna's life -- ironically, since his wife is the target of one of the gang's blackmail schemes. Several implausible plots begin to intersect and everything winds up in court with Anna accused of murder. Flashbacks abound as everything gets sorted out. Meanwhile, Crawford acts up a storm in a role that's a bridge between her younger, scrappy MGM persona and the put-upon middle-aged women of her later career at Warner Bros.

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Humphrey Bogart, Madeleine Lebeau, and Leonid Kinskey in Casablanca

Rick Blaine: Humphrey Bogart
Ilsa Lund: Ingrid Bergman
Victor Laszlo: Paul Henreid
Capt. Louis Renault: Claude Rains
Maj. Heinrich Strasser: Conrad Veidt
Signor Ferrari: Sydney Greenstreet
Ugarte: Peter Lorre
Carl: S.Z. Sakall
Yvonne: Madeleine Lebeau
Sam: Dooley Wilson
Emil: Marcel Dalio
Annina Brandel: Joy Page
Berger: John Qualen
Sascha: Leonid Kinskey
Pickpocket: Curt Bois

Director: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Based on a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Art direction: Carl Jules Weyl
Film editing: Owen Marks
Music: Max Steiner

A few weeks ago, Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving member of the cast of Casablanca, died at the age of 92. Lebeau played Yvonne, the Frenchwoman with whom Rick Blaine has been having an affair. When he breaks off their relationship coldly, she comes to his cafe on the arm of a German officer to spite him, but when the crowd starts singing the "Marseillaise" to drown out the Germans' singing of "Die Wacht am Rhein," Yvonne, tears streaming down her face, joins in. It's one of the many character vignettes that make Casablanca so entertaining. The film is filled with characters who have nothing at all to do with the main plot: the choice Rick has to make whether to renew his old affair with Ilsa Lund or let her leave Casablanca with her husband, Victor Laszlo. But if the movie simply focused on that love triangle, would it be the classic that it appears today to be? What makes Casablanca such an enduring film, I think, is the texture of its screenplay, which won Oscars for Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. And that texture is provided by several dozen character players, to whom somehow the screenwriters managed to give abundant time. The result is such memorable bits as the one in which the waiter, Carl, sits down at a table with an elderly couple, the Leuchtags (Ilka Grüning and Ludwig Stössel), who have just received the visas they need to immigrate to the United States. Carl speaks German to them at first, but the Leuchtags insist that they should speak English so they will fit in when they reach America. Then Herr Leuchtag turns to his wife and asks what time it is:

Liebchen -- sweetness -- what watch?
Ten watch.
Such much? 

Carl assures them, "You will get along beautiful in America." Has there ever been a movie more quotable? It is, of course, a great movie, largely because everyone took the time to weave such moments into its fabric. I don't claim perfection for it: The subservience of Sam to Rick, whom he calls "Mr. Rick" or "Boss," smacks of the racial attitudes of the era, and I wince when Ilsa refers to Sam as "the boy." (Dooley Wilson was in his 50s when the film was made.) James Agee, who was not as impressed with Casablanca as many of his contemporaries were, "snickered at" some of the expository dialogue, such as Ilsa's plea, "Oh, Victor, please don't go to the underground meeting tonight." But it continues to cast a spell that few other films have ever equaled.