Stolen Face, 1952.
Directed by Terence Fisher.
Starring Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, André Morell, Mary Mackenzie, and John Wood.
SYNOPSIS:
A brilliant plastic surgeon recreates the face of his lost love on a disfigured criminal patient, whom he marries, only for his original love to turn back up.
Dr. Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid) is a brilliant plastic surgeon and a man with principles, someone who won’t do work that he deems unnecessary just for a quick buck. After consulting with a colleague on whether he could reconstruct the face of Lily (Mary Mackenzie), a convicted thief with bad facial scarring caused by bomb damage during WWII, he goes on holiday where he meets Alice (Lizabeth Scott), a beautiful blonde concert pianist on a pre-tour break. During their time together, Philip and Alice fall deeply in love, but Alice has a secret – she is engaged to David (André Morell), who plans to marry her when they return from the tour, which Philip only discovers after he has returned home.
Broken hearted and assuming he will never see Alice again, Philip decides to reconstruct Lily’s face to match Alice’s before marrying her. However, once they are married Lily returns to her old ways, putting the doctor in a difficult position with his colleagues and associates, until a guilt-ridden Alice turns up and questions are asked.
To get the most out of Stolen Face, you have to go into it with a bit of trepidation, a little suspension of disbelief and the willingness to just accept the story that is being presented. Of course, real plastic surgery doesn’t work like it does in this movie and you cannot recreate somebody else’s face verbatim on a different skull as genetics, DNA, bone structure and all other manner of biological conditions means it just doesn’t happen that way. But back in the 1950s you could do or say anything about plastic surgery in a movie and general audiences would lap it up as it was a subject that was unlikely to have any effect in their everyday lives, much like the mention of computers in a movie from the 1960s through to the 1980s would leave people baffled as they didn’t know any better.
So, to compensate for this you need to have a strong story with characters you can, if not fully get behind, at least understand their motives, and this is where Stolen Face scores highly. It lays out its stall in the first scene as an elderly rich woman goes to see Dr. Ritter without an appointment, bursting into his office as he is about to leave for the day and demanding surgery as she cannot bear seeing herself age. The doctor looks her over and says he won’t do any more procedures on her as she has already had work done previously, and inferior work by another doctor at that, and even when she offers him £1000 – approximately £37,000 in today’s money – he still refuses.
Already, Stolen Face is presenting a moral question and through Doctor Philip we are getting a measured and sensible answer, but another one comes along shortly after, when the doctor is presented with a statistic about the connection between disfigurement and crime, and as the film rolls on there are more and more scenarios and questions that pop up regarding class, gender roles, love, marriage, obsession and the ambiguity of Doctor Ritter’s character.
Taken at face value it is all rather silly, but when you look beyond the idea of plastic surgery being a quick fix for a myriad of problems – an idea, and a metaphor, that hasn’t really gone away in the 70-odd years since this movie was made – it is quite easy to get sucked into Doctor Ritter’s dilemma, something made easier by a very likeable performance courtesy of Austrian actor Paul Henreid. His easy manner and comforting delivery make Ritter a man you can trust, although once Lily’s criminal behaviour starts to manifest after her surgery his stoicism gets tested, with Lily taking advantage of his money but not gelling with his upper-class lifestyle. He never rubs it in her face or calls it out, subtly paying off her misdemeanors so as not to cause a fuss, but you would think at least one of his colleagues would try to talk him out of it. Then again, the movie is only 72 minutes long, so some things need to be glossed over fairly quickly.
But despite being economically written, Stolen Face is so well performed and slickly shot – for a 1952 Hammer film anyway (but that’s Terence Fisher for you) – that it draws you in. The love story between Ritter and Alice is charming, the dual performance of Lizabeth Scott (who was dubbed impeccably by Mary Mackenzie when she was playing Lily) is magnetic, and Hammer regular André Morell (in his first appearance for the studio) makes the most of his few minutes of screen time, making David the most sensible character in the movie, despite the fact you’re probably not supposed to like him as he is Alice’s fiancé and stopping true love from blossoming. If it were made today, he would probably be a villainous character, but here he is innocent and charming, and not entirely in the dark about what is going on.
As is the custom with these 4K UHD collector’s editions, Hammer have crammed in as many nuggets as they can for extras, including the UK and US cuts of the movie, both with different audio commentaries, and plenty of features covering film noir, the career of Lizabeth Scott, detailed looks at the sexual politics of the movie, and so on. Far too many to list here, but it all comes packaged in their usual digipak box featuring fantastic new artwork, making this a must-have if you have been collecting these editions so far.
Overall, Stolen Face is very much a British thriller from the 1950s with elements of film noir, but it does pose a lot of questions that are still relevant today, perhaps even more so. Yes, the language and use of technology is crude by today’s standards, but when put into context it still manages to deliver its messages and create talking points whilst being an entertaining 72 minutes and one of the best pre-Gothic era movies Hammer made. Recommended.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
