Word: maughams
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Quartet. An entertaining package of four unrelated Somerset Maugham short stories (TIME...
Quartet (Rank; Eagle Lion), British cinema's talent-studded gift to Somerset Maugham on his 75th birthday, is a neatly packaged film based on four unrelated Maugham short stories. Expertly scripted by R. C. Sherriff (Odd Man Out, This Above All, etc.) and urbanely introduced by Author Maugham himself, it also makes a handsomely mounted gift for moviegoers who don't insist on all the Hollywood formulas...
Story No. i (The Facts of Life) is a pleasant, inconsequential gag and No. 2 (The Alien Corn) a piece of out & out bathos. But script No. 3 is a solid bite of meatiest Maugham. The Kite is the story of Herbert Sunbury (George Cole), a simple-minded city lad with a possessive mom (Hermione Baddeley) and a small boy's passion for flying kites on the local commons. But Herbert's young bride wants him with no kite strings-nor silver cords-attached. When he refuses to cut loose, she kicks him out and plays...
Quartet ends with The Colonel's Lady, an exhilarating snifter of Maugham's best vintage. It describes the troubles of a Blimpish colonel and his mousy, neglected wife whose little volume of passionate love poems suddenly becomes a nationwide bestseller. Cecil Parker and Nora Swinburne are just right in the leading roles, and the camera makes some telling, acidulous comments on club-chair Berties and Mayfair literati...
Novelist Somerset Maugham was given a belated 75th birthday party by Manhattan's Overseas Press Club. He blew out a single candle and offered a serene opinion on Britain's future: "There can be no reason to fear for the nation so long as the women of England retain their magnificent virility...