User reviews

Some giagantic plot holes in this one, but it's still kind of fun to watch it all unfold. And of course, the awesome Alan Hale (Gilligan's dad) is in it, and his films are guaranteed fun. Thug "Broken Nose" Dawson (Donlevy) gets a face lift so he can make a clean get-away, but there's still the problem of the surgeon and the nurse who did the surgery. Molly Lamont is "Mary", who tries to get away from it all as well, but fate steps in and she's back in the soup. It's a show within a show premise, with Hale as the studio boss, and Erik Rhodes as his assistant. Rhodes was always "the foreigner with the accent" in the Fred Astair and Ginger Roger films. Some pretty in-consequential roles for Jack Randall, Wallace Ford, and Phyllis Brooks. They are just along for the ride, while we see if Mary can tip off the cops before Dawson recognizes her. It's a typical caper... more complicated than it has to be, running around, getting locked in closets, but it's light hearted and fun. Directed by W.C. Cabanne, in his prime. He had started in silents and made the switch to talkies. Pretty good, but you really have to buy into it all and not look too closely.

This was a pretty low budget film from Warners considering it starred Wallace Ford and Brian Donlevy (Warners had lots of bigger name gangster actors at this time). However, despite this being a very slight movie and one that has some stupid moments (mostly involving Wallace Ford's character), it is still worth seeing--even if it loses steam towards the end of the film.

The first half of the film is great. Donlevy is a gangster wanted by the cops. He is a hideous man that is easy to recognize. However, he finds an evil plastic surgeon and afterwards he is kind of handsome. But, Donlevy thinks he is incredibly handsome and goes to Hollywood where, due to his HUGE ego, he knows he'll be a star. Well, his acting actually stinks and the only reason he is put in a gangster film is because the studio PR man thinks Donlevy is a rich playboy--and putting him in a film would drum up interest in the movie. Later, though, they find out who he really is and the very interesting movie then essentially becomes a 2nd-rate comedy of errors--and loses steam.

I think the film would have been better with more Donlevy and less Ford--his character was really annoying and stupid. However, the general plot idea isn't bad. To see a better but similar film, see Jimmy Cagney's film, LADY KILLER (1933).

Another Face offers no shattering truths, and was just one of hundreds of time-fillers of its day. But the deeper you go into these sausage-factory productions the more you want of them. Whereas nowadays I can pretty much tell from a director's CV what will be good and what won't, and can immediately cross a director off my list if, for instance, he had a winning film at Sundance or is the protégé of Robert Evans, everything in the frenzied early days of the talkies was much more random and had nothing to do with the strivings of an ambitious individual. The actors and writers were either juiced that day or they weren't, and the director pointed the camera.

The plot: Brian Donlevy is a gangster named "Broken Nose" Dawson who has plastic surgery to elude police and then goes to Hollywood to try his luck as an actor. Wallace Ford, a fantastic character actor whose looks and mannerisms will remind modern viewers of Steve Zahn, steps into the Lee Tracy role of a muckraking press agent who is just itching for a story like this. His girlfriend, played by the hot -- and I mean HOT, like the way you think Jean Harlow will look before you actually see her and realize she looks like Miss Piggy -- Phyllis Brooks, is a conceited actress who doesn't appreciate being asked to play opposite a no-talent thug. And Alan Hale and even Hattie McDaniel are on hand to make you think you're at MGM, an impression that the slick cinematography does nothing to belie.

This is one of those movies that make you wonder why acting is considered more "naturalistic" today. I guess if you consider people being sprayed down with water before each take to look sweaty and scrunching their forehead to show how hard they're working at existing on camera, yes, modern actors are more naturalistic. This cast, however, is not a collection of egomaniacal studs trying to out-emote each other but a well-oiled team that Christopher Guest would have been proud of, the linchpin being the underrated and versatile Wallace Ford. Brian Donlevy really inhabits his role to the point of being unsympathetic and crass, and despite the comedic trappings of the film, may be up there with Joe Pesci in his lived-in portrayal of a sociopath. Try not to be shocked when, cornered by the police, he drops his facade and instantly fires a round at a woman and then shoots the lighting guy!

Before that happens, there are numerous funny moments, like when Donlevy thinks he hears someone spying on him in a closet. As it turns out, someone really is, but her life is spared when Donlevy, remembering he's an actor now, suddenly becomes self-conscious about his profile and starts trying to make his chin jut out in the perfect way. Lots of the movie even feels like old-pro improv, with lines that are written to sound artfully flubbed, like when Alan Hale, not believing that a famous gangster like Broken Nose Dawson is on his set, says, "That's fine, that's fine... Get me Jesse James, too, and Dr. Jekyll, and then we'll have a male... quartet." He only mentions three men, but even if there were four, that wouldn't make the phrase "male quartet" any less awkward. Yet they left it in, and its lack of Hawksian polish makes it feel very fresh. Really cool.

The ending is even action-packed and intense. Check this movie out if they play it on TCM.

... that being a gangster film and a satire of the film industry in this odd little film from director Christy Cabanne and RKO.

Brian Donlevy plays Broken Nose Dawson, a desperate criminal on the run. He goes to a plastic surgeon to get his appearance altered so that he can quit the rackets and retire with his ill gotten gains. After he recovers, he sends his associate to kill the plastic surgeon and his nurse and then kills the associate afterwards. Thus nobody alive can tie his new face to his old identity - BUT. The nurse who actually assisted the doctor quit when she learned who Broken Nose was and left town. Because he didn't actually kill the doctor and nurse himself Dawson doesn't know that this witness is floating around out there.

Thinking he is in the clear, Dawson takes the identity of Spencer Dutro III, goes to Hollywood, and claims to be a wealthy guy who is interested in breaking into acting. This actually gets him a job since the studio heads thinks that a rich playboy such as Dutro in the cast will drum up interest in the film.

But then some bad luck for Dutro/Dawson. The nurse he thought he had murdered is in Hollywood too, the girlfriend of a western star, and she recognizes him on the set. Her error is telling the studio PR man (Wallace Ford as Joe Haynes) rather than the police. Joe locks her in his office closet to keep her quiet, and arranges to have Dawson arrested on the set later that evening as part of a big PR stunt.

The part of the film between Joe finding out who Dutro really is and the arrival of the police that night rather sags, but where it succeeds is in establishing PR guy Joe Haynes and his girlfriend/actress as hideous self-involved human beings. Think about it - Joe is completely OK with leaving his girlfriend close to danger all day in the person of Broken Nose Dawson if it will help his career. So when the big finale comes and these two end up being taken hostage by Dawson, I really don't care or not if they make it out alive.

I mainly watched this for Wallace Ford, because Eddie Muller has always praised the guy's talent and this was the biggest part I've seen him have, with him normally playing supporting roles.

Broken Nose Dawson is a brutal gangster on the run from NY police. Crooked Dr. Buler does a facial reconstruction surgery with reluctant nurse Mary McCall (Molly Lamont). With a new face fit for the movies, he (Brian Donlevy) sets off for Hollywood posing as playboy Spencer Dutro. He sends his underling Muggsie Brown to take out the doctor and sets up Muggsie with the cops. He thinks that he's free and clear. Unbeknownst to him, nurse McCall knows his secret and quits her job before the hit.

I love this concept for a thriller drama. Dawson trying to break into Hollywood is a little funny, but there is no tension in it. This is trying to be a screwball comedy. With an unlikely turn, Mary gets back into the story which does finally has some tension. It's a lot of silly comedic turns and unreasonable characters. A more compelling story would center on McCall trying to convince anybody about Broken Nose Dawson. If it's years later and Dawson became a big star, nobody would believe her.

Brian Donlevy recovers from plastic surgery to find he has been given a handsome face. Immediately vanity sets in and he envisages a new lifestyle. He sees a chance to give up his criminal past to seek Hollywood fame. But first he needs to rub out the people who have seen his new face. He thinks he's done that but his late assistant has killed the wrong nurse. We see how he artfully arranges his henchman's death by the hands of the police. Will the nurse who attended his surgery spoil Donlevy's plans? We see Donlevy in Hollywood. It's funny to see him doing his bad acting, vainly showing his best profile to the camera. Donlevy was indeed a handsome devil in his younger day and he had a flair for comedy. The idea that plastic surgery can change a criminal's life is done from a different angle in Hammer's 1952 Stolen Face. But I prefer this one.

This film may very well have been Brian Donlevy's worst film. Had it been done at Warner Brothers, Jack Warner would have punished Humphrey Bogart by casting him in Donlevy's unbelievable role.

The problem is that this film can't make its mind up. Donlevy is a stone killer like he was in the film that launched him, Barbary Coast and then he acts like the lovable mug he was in The Great McGinty. If RKO was going to play it for laughs they should have stuck to it being a satire.

Brian Donlevy, notorious gangster from New York, gets a facelift and goes to Hollywood after murdering the physician and nurse who did the job and ratting out a colleague who the police do in. Unfortunately there's another nurse on the premises he doesn't know about who witnesses the double homicide.

So with his new found freedom, what does our fugitive on the run do? Why he decides to live out a dream and he goes to Hollywood saying he's a rich playboy who wants to get in the movies. v

Donlevy's naturalness with gangster roles intrigues studio boss Alan Hale and publicity man Wallace Ford. For the rest of this film you have to see it to believe it.

This has some of the same plot situations as James Cagney's far better film at Warner Brothers, Lady Killer. But Lady Killer was light years better than this.

Brian Donlevy must have shuddered when somebody mentioned this one to him later on.

...because I threw mine out the window after watching this fool fest. Broken Nose was my favorite character, and I despised him! Every single main character is idiotically annoying or annoyingly idiotic. I was going to call this review Swiss Cheese, but I guess you can't call it a hole in the plot when foolish characters constantly do foolish things.

Since IMDB won't let me give it zero stars, I'll say the one star is for the novelty of seeing good ole Erik Rhodes be boring for a change.

Some people get this movie, some don't -- just look at the IMDb ratings -- but count me among those who enjoyed it. Brian Donlevy stars as a hood with a notoriously large proboscis who goes under the knife of a plastic surgeon. Not only is his nose whittled away but having taken off for California, he now believes he's ready for a new career as a movie star. Just a few small problems intervene. He has no acting talent. And he hasn't quite escaped his shady past. Donlevy plays comedy better than most people might suspect, ably supported by Alan Hale as a studio mogul and Wallace Ford as a quick-on-the-trigger press agent. If it pops up on TCM again, give it a shot. As a satire on movie-making, it's surprisingly good.

Another two bit police drama. A psychotic crook with a broken nose gets it fixed so he won't be recognized. Once he gets his new face he heads off to Hollywood to become a matinee idol. He manages to act a little, but the nurse who aided in his plastic surgery recognizes him (the doctor had been killed earlier). So things play out with the guy trying to work but there is danger all around him. There is little to this thing. If you watch too many of these things they are so formulaic that they're barely worth the time. You have a male and female lead who are about as boring as you can get. Then you have a ditzy woman and her idiotic boyfriend. Don't bother.

In Another Face, a wanted gangster gets plastic surgery to start a new life. The plot has been done before (Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid had their own versions), but if you like these types of movies, check out Brian Donlevy's take on it. At the start of the film, he has a face nose, fake teeth, blonde hair, and a ruddy complexion. His new handsome mug is the one we all know and love, and it's quite fun to see him admiring himself in the mirror at every opportunity.

The rest of the plot is quite stupid, but anyone who chooses a profession in either the mafia or Hollywood isn't known for his intelligence. Brian, in his new life, decides he wants to be a movie star. The funniest scene of the movie is his screen test, in which he says and does everything wrong. But the vast majority of the movie isn't that funny. It's full of characters who make stupid decisions, and there's a plot hole that's quite shocking: anyone who assisted on a full facial plastic surgery operation wouldn't know what the man would look like after he was healed up and ready for the public. Brian's face would have been bloody, bruised, and swollen, but maybe 1932 audiences didn't know that.