I have lost count how many times I have seen Paul Henreid in Casablanca, in which Henried plays Victor Laszlo, the principled and determined French Resistance fighter who is desperate to get himself and his wife Ilsa Lund away from the clutches of the Nazis. Maybe that’s why I had a little bit of trouble seeing him as sleazy Dr. Philip Ritter in Stolen Face. Maybe the filmmakers intended to portray Dr. Ritter as the good guy, but I didn’t believe he was one after seeing Stolen Face more than once. His character is much more nuanced than appears at first. Ritter may believe that everything he does is for the best, but he doesn’t seem to learn anything different when the evidence points to the contrary.
Dr. Philip Ritter and Dr. Jack Wilson run a successful plastic surgery practice in postwar London. They also contribute their services to patients in need, including prisoners at H. M. Prison Holloway. Dr. Russell, the prison warden, explains to them that one of the prisoners, a woman named Lily Conover, was scarred badly as a result of injuries she sustained during the German blitz campaign over London in World War II. The three of them decide that Lily Conover could be the next candidate for charity plastic surgery.
On the way home from the prison, Ritter falls asleep at the wheel of the car. Dr. Wilson grabs the wheel and saves them both from a collision with a truck. Because of their near miss, Wilson forces Ritter to take a vacation. It is obvious to him that Ritter needs some rest and a break from his work. Ritter finally agrees.
Ritter starts a road trip and stops at an inn, where he meets Alice Brent, a concert pianist. She is also taking a rest, but from a hectic concert schedule. Neither one of them gets much rest, however, because they embark on a dizzying romance that includes one activity after another: car rides, horseback riding, a picnic, bike riding, fishing, and a buggy ride, all shown in a montage. Alice has to return to work before Philip does, and he wants them both to rearrange their schedules. Alice has something she wants to tell Philip, but he kisses her instead (effectively shutting her up). He wants Alice to marry him, but she runs off. Alice loves him, too. But when he knocks on her door the next day at the inn, Alice has left without saying goodbye.
(This article about Stolen Face contains spoilers.)
Philip Ritter is a driven man in both his professional and personal lives. He works so hard and gets so little sleep that his partner forces him to take a vacation. He romances Alice Brent with one activity after another, so many that they are shown in a montage with no dialogue. Alice wants to tell him about David, her fiancé, but Ritter is too consumed with passion to give her a chance. It really is his own fault that he learns about David after Alice’s departure from the inn. He never gave her a chance to speak.
Philip Ritter returns to work, but he is not the same. His partner Wilson thinks he is worse than ever and suspects, rightly so, that a woman is involved. Dr. Russell, the prison warden, has called to remind Ritter and Wilson about the woman, Lily Conover, they met before Ritter’s vacation. Ritter agrees to return to the prison and keep his promise to Lily about performing the plastic surgery. And what does Ritter do? He remakes Lily Conover’s face to look exactly like Alice Brent’s. He tells no one why he did this or even that he used Alice Brent as a model. He doesn’t have to because he met her at a countryside inn while he was on vacation, and no one knows anything about their romance. It almost sounds like the plot of a science fiction film, not a film noir. Ritter is portrayed as a more sympathetic character than he deserves. His choice is a horrible thing to do, and he will pay for his actions, at least partly.
David breaks off his engagement with Alice Brent because he realizes that she is in love with someone else. He tells her that he can hear it in her music. Now she is free to contact Philip Ritter again. But Ritter has asked Lily Conover to marry him. His surgery partner Jack thinks he is throwing his career away, and he feels this way because it is a matter of class. Lily Conover is a working-class woman now with the face of a concert pianist. Even Dr. Philip Ritter can’t change Lily’s working-class proclivities, although he tries. He picks out Conover’s hair color and all her clothes. He takes her to the opera, but Conover would much rather go to a jazz club and takes Ritter to one, where she meets an old friend, Pete. Ritter treats Lily Conover as though the only thing in her past is her wartime injury. Ritter never imagines that Lily’s life could be more complicated.
Lily starts to get more and more annoyed with Philip’s domineering ways, particularly the way that he is trying to changer her tastes and her opinions, not just her physical appearance. He isn’t so successful, however. A Mr. Cutter from Scotland Yard arrives at the house to inform Ritter that his wife has stolen a brooch from Loring’s jewelry store. Philip describes it as a misunderstanding to Mr. Cutter, but he tells Lily that he knows she stole the brooch. Lily replies, “Didn’t you ever see something you wanted so bad, you just had to have it?” Philip sure does. He knows how this feels because he remade Lily’s face to have something, someone, that he couldn’t have, even vicariously.
It's never mentioned in the film whether Lily was a thief before her surgery, but she takes it up with increasing enthusiasm afterward, partly because of her irritation with her husband. The next time that she is caught, she is walking out of a department store wearing a fur coat that she did not pay for. Philip covers for Lily again, but he is not very sympathetic. At one point she asks him, “What am I supposed to do? Get down on my knees and thank you for the rest of my life?” It’s hard for viewers not to sympathize with her: She is trapped in a life that sounded glamorous at first but feels more and more like the prison she left before her marriage. But her behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive. She drinks, she parties, she invites her friends over to the Ritter home at all hours.
Alice Brent arrives to see Philip Ritter again, and Philip tells her the whole story about Lily and their marriage. Alice is worried about him and his state of mind, and she and Jack Wilson look for Philip, who is traveling by train to Plymouth. Nothing is mentioned about Philip’s responsibility for all that he has done. He was a respected plastic surgeon at the start of the film and he still commands respect, in spite of the way he treated Lily Conover, beginning with the awful decision to remake her as Alice Brent.
The film ends with Philip Ritter and Alice Brent walking away from the camera and from the scene of Lily’s death (she fell off the train to Plymouth after surprising Ritter). I suppose the filmmakers intended this as a happy ending; it is a film noir version of a happy ending! But I was disappointed because I didn’t believe Philip deserved Alice, not after the way he treated Lily. He didn’t believe she was good enough for him as she was, so he tried everything to remake her. Her physical appearance isn’t enough; he has to change her taste in clothes and music. And Lily Conover is the one who pays the consequences when it all goes south.
Stolen Face is an apt title for this film. The theme of stealing is pretty clear in Lily’s behavior after her disastrous marriage to Philip. But Philip is the one who stole so much more from Lily—and from Alice, too. He thinks so little of both women’s identities that he uses them interchangeably by replicating Alice’s face to remake Lily’s. It’s all portrayed rather sympathetically as far as Ritter is concerned. He is doing his postwar charitable bit to help Lily and the nation heal. But the way he goes about it is not commendable.
Philip Ritter makes a great film noir antihero. He could be called an homme fatale, and Paul Henreid does a good job portraying him. But the real credit goes to Lizabeth Scott, who plays both Alice Brent and Lily Conover after her surgery. I bet Scott had the most fun portraying Lily and giving Philip his comeuppance before she dies. Alice is meant to be Lily’s opposite, and Scott portrays both characters believably. But I still find myself wondering why Alice follows Philip away from the train wreck at the end of the film. If she had been paying close attention to the way Philip has been treating women all along, she should be running in the opposite direction!
June 23, 1952, release date • Directed by Terence Fisher • Screenplay by Martin Berkeley, Richard Landau • Based on a story by Alexander Paal, Steven Vas • Music by Malcolm Arnold • Edited by Maurice Rootes • Cinematography by Walter J. Harvey
Paul Henreid as Dr. Philip Ritter • Lizabeth Scott as Alice Brent (Lily Conover, after surgery) • André Morell as David • Mary Mackenzie as Lily Conover, before surgery • John Wood as Dr. John (aka Jack) Wilson • Arnold Ridley as Dr. Russell • Susan Stephen as Betty Wilson • Diana Beaumont as May • Terence O’Regan as Pete Snipe • Russell Napier as Detective Cutler • Ambrosine Phillpotts as Ms. Patten, fur department clerk • Everley Gregg as Lady Millicent Harringay • Cyril Smith as Alf Bixby, the innkeeper • Richard Wattis as Mr. Wentworth, store manager • Dorothy Bramhall as Ms. Simpson, receptionist • Janet Burnell as Maggie Bixby • Alexis France as Mrs. Emmett • John Bull as Charles Emmett • Bartlett Mullins as the farmer • Anna Turner as the maid • John Warren as the railway guard • Hal Osmond as the photographer
Distributed by Exclusive Films (United Kingdom), Lippert Pictures (United States) • Produced by Hammer Film Productions
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