Ageing, observant novelist Somer- set Maugham was honoured in "Quartet" not only by the fact that he was allowed to wisecrack his verbal champagne on the bows of the story, but by the treatment accorded, these four short vignettes. The full treatment—a battery of four extremely competent and imaginative producers, a cast scintillating if not star studded, a faithful adherence to the spirit and manner of the original stories—was given the film: and it succeeded.

Only objection: that after having seen both Paisa and Shoeshine within a couple of weeks before this British effort Which laid the New York critics in admiring rows along the Broadway aisles, the film had an inevitable and somewhat unsatisfying staginess. This may be due quite as much to novelist Maugham's choice of settings, his accurately documented observation of the relevant minor material to illumine the lives of his characters.

Accuracy

In this the four directors certainly did the old boy proud. Every little gesture, every article lying carelessly on the tables or decorating the walls was made to tell, without obvious verbal embellishment. The directors turn in a workmanlike job, dispensing in a pleasing manner with angles for angles' sake (except in the opening cell scene in "The Kite"). And with the directors were the cast—everyone of them counting, right down to the two-line bit player who stayed with us only for a couple of feet of film. True to the spirit of a novelist whose interest is a predominantly in conventional people in pretty conventional situations, the cast were largely typed: but few of them were in a rut. Maugham relies on the accuracy of his backgrounds rather than the behaviour of his people for realism, and the result was that the characters were pretty stereotyped. Chief exception was Herbert, in "The Kite," who, with the best of the four stories and the meatiest of the less conventional parts to put over, almost convinced that he must in real life be just such a narrow, suburban, unintelligent type. But in a part where he could so easily have fallen into a comic, he made the obsession credible, somehow tragic. The allegory which diffidently lingers just behind much of Maugham's reminiscing came out most strongly in this story of the boy whose only lift from the humdrum prosaic round of existence was at the end of his kite string. Made a rounded person in the background of the obnoxiously ordinary suburban villa and his nearly shrewish mother, Herbert in the "Century of the Common Man" may have been an allegory which the novelist didn't intend.

Cynicism

"The Colonel's Lady" was next in order (last on the bill) and next in merit. No anti-climax to the peak of the film, it had much of the paradoxical pungency combined with conventionalism which soaked through most of the Quartet. The more verbose, active Colonel Peregrine was out-acted by his silent static wife, but stayed a credible if stock character nevertheless. The O. Henry flick at the tail of the story should have brought tender tears to the eyes: it didn't, but the fault is rather in the [unclear: story] than in the [unclear: acting]. As it was, "The Colonel's Lady" was cynical more than sentimental, and affective thereby.

Of the other two stories there is leas to be said. The first is a flippant amusing little piece of the kind which suited Radford and Wayne. Fortunately it was lifted above the average by Mai Zatterling—also a flippant, amusing little piece whose over-exposure (nothing to do with camera at that) added much to the verve of the opening. The de Maupassant ending was well done. The second story was very well done by the main character—George the would-be pianist—but, however well acted it was, and though the cast and director were fully perceptive, Maugham is perhaps too superficial to get tragedy; it stays cynical, sad, but not tragic.

Quartet is well harmonised: the stories blend well, the actors and directors and the sets are without discord. It's an excellent film, but Maugham is definitely in the "light orchestral" range.