How does Hollywood handle facial disfigurement

A.� CInema has had a difficult relationship with disfigurement since the early days. The first horror films of the 1920s dreamt up monsters such as Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera, Tod Browning's Freaks, James' Whales Frankenstein.� Facial injury continued to be a complex subject for film-makers until the war hero emerged in the 1940s.

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From the 1950s onwards, disfigurement was seen as the "other" - the loner and sexual miscreant. It took a long time before studios cottoned on to the appeal of disfigurement on the big screen - Tom Hanks won an Oscar in Philadelphia, William Dafoe was hideously maimed in Shadow of a Vampire and Gary Oldman showed a horribly devoured face in Hannibal.

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Modern Hollywood films like Vanilla Sky and Pay It Forward have been critisiced for using disfigurement as a clever plot mechanisim or a bid for sympathy from the audience. The English Patient and The Elephant Man have been given more balanced, humane treatment.

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Men are usually the victim, a rare exception being Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face.

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Q.� Will Hollywood change its attitude

A.� A film writer called Paul Darke is currently compiling a BFI catalogue of disability films, to be released in October at the same time as the re-release of the 1937 film Freaks. The catalogue title is Deformed People Depress Me after a favourite line in the Vincent Price movie Dragonwyck.

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Francois Dupeyron's First World War drama The Officers' Ward, out now, is a war movie, wihtout violence, a "disfigurement" film, which says it refuses to equate looks with self-worth.� Based on a book by Mark Duigan, it focuses on a dashing officer, Adrian F, who is injured before fighting even starts. He spends the next five years in the specialist Val de Grace hospital near Paris - the birthplace of 20th century plastic surgery - having his jaw and mouth rebuilt.

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By Katharine MacColl