Word: maughams
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...ignoble marriage. Since it is nothing of the sort at the conclusion of The Painted Veil, the picture, despite the fact that Censor Joseph Breen gave it Certificate of Approval No. 395, can be considered an advertisement for adultery as a matrimonial cureall. In this respect it follows Somerset Maugham's shallow novel, from which it was adapted. In other respects, except that it lacks the rapid-fire beginning in which the two lovers see the doorknob turn and wonder whether they have been discovered, The Painted Veil improves on its original...
...this collection of short stories, Author Maugham has selected the 30 he thinks his best. In a Preface that was not written to be skipped, he gives his views on the art of the short story, pays his respects to the two masters of the trade, Maupassant and Chekhov. Maupassant, says Author Maugham, was his early model. "Maupassant's stories are good stories. The anecdote is interesting apart from the narration so that it would secure attention if it were told over the dinner-table; and that seems to me a very great merit indeed. ... I have little doubt that...
...Maugham defends both Maupassant and Chekhov (as well as himself and all other popular writers) against the charge of truckling to editors: "Sometimes a critic will describe a book of short stories as magazine stories and thus in his own mind damn them. That is foolish. No form of art is produced unless there is a demand for it and if newspapers and magazines did not publish short stories they would not be written." All but two of the stories in East and West were published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine, whose editor, Ray Long, sometimes cut them...
...Author Maugham admits that all his characters are based on real people, calls the practice "necessary and inevitable," but denies that he ever exhibits a complete portrait. If he did, he says, the character would seem incredible and false. What principally puzzles him is why so many critics have called his stories "competent." Says he: "There is evidently something that a number of people do not like in my stories and it is this they try to express when they damn them with the faint praise of competence. I have a notion that it is the definiteness of their form...
...most surprising thing about Of Human Bondage is not that it was made so well but that it was made at all. That this version possesses much of the patience and clarity of Author Maugham's writing is by no means due entirely to a fine performance by Leslie Howard. The rest of the cast acts with the authority and response which, more than any obvious and showy tricks, are the sign of good directing. Bette Davis, in the first part she has ever had which has required more than handsome clothes and an enigmatic expression, makes Mildred almost...