The Moon and Sixpence
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Movie Reviews of The Moon and Sixpence
Movie Review: Splendid Maugham Adaptation
Summary: 5 Stars
Somerset Maugham's Anglicized roman-a-clef about Paul Gauguin received happy treatment in this 1942 Albert Lewin version. Always drawn to high-falutin' subjects, and frequently rather poky in his approach, here Lewin proves an ideal interpreter of the source material; he provides reams of dialogue for Maugham's usual narrator/stand-in, wittily played by Herbert Marshall, whose acres of commentary over silent visuals proves piquant rather than irritating. George Sanders was never seen to better than in this portrayal of an artist whose brutal honesty and selfishness proves destructive to those who love him. The entire cast is excellent, but special mention should be made of Florence Bates. She's usually a treat, but never in a role like this; the lady seems to be having the time of her life cast against type. The DVD transfer is fine; one version reproduces the theatrical release, with its black-and-white Europe, sepia tropics, and burst of color at the end. Highly recommended for fans of literate cinema.Movie Review: The Moon and Sixpence DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
Really excellent quality! This is a really rare film, not available for rental even. I have looked for years but always read someone else's review stating that "The color version was not included". This DVD has both versions, the color version is the one you want to see. Good story, GAD WHAT A CAD!!! Fun to watch, fun to see a VERY & GORGEOUS Elena Verdugo, best remembered as the housekeeper on the TV series Marcus Welby.Movie Review: Fairly accurate portrayal...
Summary: 4 Stars
...of perhaps history's greatest novel.
I first read the book many years ago and fell in love with it. Then I fell in love with the work of Paul Gaugin of whom the book is a fictional biography. Yeah, yeah, there's the romanticism involved, i.e., a curator told me Gaugin apparently died of syphillus (though I'd read before that he died of heart failure). But Charles Strickland/Paul Gaugin represent the height of individualism: leave the comfortable behind for the unknown even though you don't know exactly what you're pursuing.
George Sanders, with whom I wasn't familiar, played Strickland. I thought he portrayed the role very well. He even laughed at the right places! (And, interestingly, Sanders seemed to have a little of the Strickland/Gaugin in his heart, if you read of his suicide. But I'll let you do that yourself.).
Herbert Marshall played Geoffery Wolfe, the Maughm-like character. I recognized him because he played Maughm in the 1946 production of "The Razor's Edge," another stellar Maugham novel.
The other characters were cast well for the roles described in the novel, especially Steven Geray as Dirk Strove--as accurate as any casting director could have been with Strove's description in the book.
Of course, there is only so much one can do with a film, and the novel is invariably better than the movie that way, but this one impressed me.
There are two versions of the film on the DVD, one as released in the theatre, and the other black and white. If you're anticipating a colorized version of the B&W print, you'll be disappointed. The theatrical release wasn't "color" like I would expect it today. But had it been, I wouldn't have been interested in it. (And I may yet watch the B&W. It'll remind me of my days of watching B&W television not that many years ago!)
The trailers on the DVD are fine too. I particularly liked Victor Mature in "Hannibal," only because I remember seeing that trailer on television when I was a kid. (I never got to see that film, probably never will, but I'll always remember that trailer).
So, again, if you want a book's details, this film won't provide them. But if you want a well-acted, fairly accurate portrayal of what went on in one of the best novels of all time, watch this one. You won't regret it.
Movie Review: Thruppence
Summary: 3 Stars
This is in many ways a faithful version of the novel, with all of its flaws (it lacks the last scene back in England, and there is a little airbrushing of the reason why the Dutch artist's wife married Dirk, but otherwise it is fairly true to the book). The book is somewhat boring: as is the movie -- it was thrilling in its day, but we have been through many iterations of the tormented genius since then. The so-called colour of the last reel is strange: most of it is simply sepia, without explanation (the world of Tahiti is the world of sepia, like Oz I suppose). The pseudo-Gauguin pictures are the only things in real colour (they are very interesting, un-Gauguin-like copies, more naturalistic -- or if you like, about as authentic as the "Bali-Java-Hollywood" dancing that goes on in one scene. The artist -- whoever it was who did them -- was clearly fascinated with the opportunity to show naked Tahitian breasts on screen!). The filmmaker has a scene or two at the end set up to mimic real Gauguin paintings (and these living images are actually quite finely considered). And there is a terrific gauguinesque "primitive" statue that appears throughout: someone who really knew Gaugin's work did that. It is interesting that the filmmakers left until the very end the showing to us of the paintings -- in so many films (e.g. Picasso) we see the artist's "work" or the knockoffs thereof and the whole artist image in the film collapses. This time they wait until the last possible moment -- very wise.
The film is marred by a couple of things: (1) the score (famed Dmitri Tiomkin) is horribly intrusive, and in fact it appears to be designed to treat the whole movie as a quirky comedy, which it certainly is not; and (2) the film is bracketed by two explanations of how awful/geniusy the hero is, in case the restless audience has any doubts. The most intriguing thing about the film is that every once in awhile it becomes slightly weird: camera angles are occasionally odd, and there are characters that are quirky (especially the expat Tahitians). And there is an impassioned performance (very German expressionist) by the Dirk character. The whole middle section of the film has this weird quality which is hard to describe, but not your usual movie stuff.
It is worth noting for anyone who doesn't know the original story of Gauguin, that the biography is false: Gauguin died of syphilis; he and his wife continued their correspondence for a number of years; and he had many women along the way. The true part is that he was indeed a creep -- and also, in reality, Gauguin was a serious self-marketer all his life. He knew exactly how to hype himself.
It is also nice that Sanders got such a juicy part for a change.