Film Review
Albert Lewin began his short but distinguished career as an independent
film director and producer with this faithful adaptation of W. Somerset
Maugham's 1919 novel
The Moon and
Sixpence, which was inspired by the life of the French painter
Paul Gauguin. Lewin started out in the script department at MGM
in the 1920s and later became personal assistant to the great Irving
Thalberg, helping to produce some of MGM's finest films of the 1930s,
before moving to Paramount. Lewin followed
The Moon and Sixpence with his best
known, and arguably greatest, film
The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), and completed his trilogy of
literary adaptations with
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947),
based on a novella by Guy de Maupassant. All three films star
George Sanders, an English actor who found prominence in Hollywood
playing the archetypal heartless cad. Sanders' performances in
Lewin's first three films are easily among his finest, and as the
unsympathetic driven artist Charles Strickland he is at his caddish
best. "The more you beat women, the more they love you for it,"
he quips, before questioning whether women, like other dumb animals,
have souls. Cads definitely ain't what they used to be.
Overly reliant on flashback and voiceover narration,
The Moon and Sixpence lacks the
dramatic impact of Lewin's subsequent films, although it makes up for
this with its atmospheric design and some inspired artistic
flourishes. Lewin did not have the resources to travel to the
South Sea islands, and so the concluding sequences set in Tahita were
filmed in the studio. The staginess of these sequences is
cunningly masked by Lewin's decision to give the film a lustrous sepia
tint, which provides an effective transition from the drab Parisian
scenes that came before and marks the change in Strickland's
personality, from super cad to something approximating a human
being. Towards the end of the film, Lewin performs his
masterstroke, with a short but stunning Technicolor sequence which
offers the only glimpse of the central character's artistic
creations. Lewin employed the same stylistic device, just as
effectively, in his subsequent two literary adaptations, exploiting the
novelty of colour film for dramatic effect.
Whilst George Sanders outshines every other member of the cast with his
charisma and arresting portrayal of a complex (and largely
unfathomable) individual, there are some notable supporting
contributions. In the moody Paris sequences, Steven Geray monopolises
our sympathies as the self-sacrificing artist who allows everything he
has to be stolen by his ungrateful friend; when we arrive in Tahiti,
Florence Bates steals the show with her warm portrayal of the
matchmaking native who gives Strickland his wife and, with it, some
measure of humanity. Herbert Marshall's presence as the narrator
is superfluous and jarring - you can't help wishing that Lewin had been
a little more creative in his adaptation of Maugham's novel, excising a
character whose sole purpose is to tell the story. This however
is the only defect in an otherwise faultless reinterpretation of a
literary classic.
The Moon and
Sixpence may not completely unveil the mysteries of the artist's
tormented soul but it sheds some valuable insights, albeit through Somerset Maugham's
decidely warped view of human nature.
© James Travers 2012
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Film Synopsis
London, in the late 19th century. Geoffrey Wolfe, a writer of
some renown, recalls the fantastic life of the painter Charles
Strickland. He first met Strickland, a mediocre stockbroker, at a
dinner party, and his first impression was he was a man of no
particular distinction. A short while later, Wolfe is
surprised to learn that Strickland has abandoned his wife and children
and settled in Paris. Suspecting that the stockbroker has eloped
with another woman, Wolfe goes after him in an attempt to bring him to
his senses. He is incredulous when Stickland tells him that he
intends to start a new life as an artist, even though he has never
painted a picture before. Stickland does not go out of his way to
make friends but he receives moral support from another artist, Dirk
Stroeve, who nurses him back to health when he falls dangerously
ill. Strickland repays Stroeve by stealing his wife, who later
kills herself when the artist tells her he has no further use for
her. After Strickland's death, Wolfe journeys to the South Sea
island of Tahiti to uncover the final chapter in the artist's
remarkable life...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.