The Moon and Sixpence

George Sanders goes Gaughin in this film based on the Somerset Maugham novel about a well respected man who decides to drop out of society and paint to his hearts delight. Leaving a wife and children behind in England he first moves to Paris where he is befriended by a kindly successful hack painter who in return is re payed with ridicule and cuckoldry. George Strickland's dream is to get to Tahiti though and be done with Western society. He eventually does but at great final cost.

Sanders is perfectly cast as the insensitive and coldly indifferent Strickland who really just wants to be left alone. He asks for nothing but exploits kindness to its fullest when forced upon him, especially by the artist Stroeve. In a leading man of the era's hand the role would more than likely have been diluted and suffered but with Sanders you get a bored condescension and disdainful inflection like no other.

Unfortunately the rest of Sixpence lags a good distance behind Sander's spot on performance. Director Albert Lewin employs very little scope and camera movement with little attention payed to set design and lighting. The sepia tint of the film washes out in some scenes and was more than likely employed by Lewin to display Strickland's magnum opus at the end but even this disappoints.

Herbert Marshall is dry and drab as the narrator and the rest of the cast flat and stiff. Combined they lack the life and conviction to be found in Sander's performance which might have even soared further had Lewin applied the expressionistic flourishes to be found in his The Picture of Dorian Gray a far more successful picture with a less secure actor.

A creator of such intellect as Albert Lewin, the director/adapter of The Moon & Sixpence, rarely had the opportunity in classic period Hollywood to showcase such a unique talent as he had and we are fortunate to have had him. There were only a handful like him that beat the odds and actually were allowed to produce true art instead of common trash -- Sternberg, Ulmer, Sturges come to mind -- and in many ways Lewin stood apart because he worked the system without challenging the former tailors and junk dealers that ran Hollywood. He made a quartet of films that express his unique style magnificently. These are, in order: The Moon & Sixpence, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami and Pandora And The Flying Dutchman. The common threads are stateliness, pacing and intelligence, with literate dialogue that has a sophistication that belies the commercialism of the time. His lead of choice was George Sanders, who was perfectly cast in the first three titles as a symbol of an age. The Moon and Sixpence is the first of this quartet and showcases what a small budget but superior talent can create. Each film was an improvement on its predecessor, and I recommend that those out there interested in stylized film follow Lewin's work chronologically to observe the course of aesthetic refinement, beginning with The Moon & Sixpence.

The story alone is worth viewing. The very idea of a person abandoning their family in order to follow one's dream, is compelling enough. George Sander's performance as well as Herbert Marshall as Somerset Maughm are both fist rate. No one could have done a finer job at playing the tortured cad then Sanders. If they had another one of those silly top 100 lists, this one for best type casting in a film about cads, then Sanders would win in a trot. He was in real life it appears, the very cad that he played so convincingly on screen. A book was even written about him by an actor friend, Brian Ahearne. The title of the book is "A Dreadful Man". The actor Ronald Coleman would not even allow Sanders in his presence, as he found his disdain and pessimism to much to bear. At the age of 65 Sanders committed suicide in a Paris hotel room just as he had promised actor David Niven years earlier, claiming that by that time he would no longer have interest in women or anything else. (Consult Niven's book "Bring On The Empty Horses") I can understand one user's previous comment about this being Sanders only great role. But Mr. Sanders won an Oscar for playing another cad, the rascal theater critic in "All About Eve". One of my favorite lines in that movie is when he replies to a very beautiful young starlet(Marilyn Monroe) who he has accompanied to a dinner party saying "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point none the less".

I will not attempt to write a "complete" review of this movie. Just note a couple of highlights.

I recently saw this movie for the first time on TCM. It is one of the most "startling" and highly original movies I have seen from that era of filmmaking.

Almost never does a movie affect me emotionally--not only as I saw it but even a couple of weeks later I am still affected by it.

Among the many things that are so powerful is the relentless negativity of the George Sanders' character throughout. And yet he makes us feel he is on a mission to be true to himself and to fulfill his destiny without apology.

To combine these elements in one character is something I have never seen in any movie. It left me confused emotionally and yet felt admiringly of someone who can eschew all human concern for others(with one exception which I will not spoil) to relentlessly pursue what he perceives as his truth and destiny.

It is a brilliant achievement in George Sanders' acting and for the directors' unapologetic vision of the movie.

I have to be careful not to spoil, but among many amazing surprises is how another artists' wife(Blanche Stroeve played by Doris Dudley whom I knew in real life) reacts to Sanders after she, at her husband's insistence, nurses him back to health. It is an amazing scene. Yet somehow we understand that Sander's purpose is so well-defined and his masculinity is so caveman-like that she cannot help but respond to him.

Definitely not politically correct. I cannot imagine a scene like this even being allowed to be shot in this way in any modern movie.

Speaking of political correctness, other surprises abound in this area particularly during the time the Sanders character moves to Tahiti.

Not to spoil but listen closely as a certain older woman who interacts with Sanders describe her long ago love affairs and the character of the men she was involved with.

If any woman was to pine for love affairs like she describes in today's world, she would be denounced by every women's group on the planet. And yet she pines for those days with infectious gusto and enthusiasm.

A movie shot like this today would set women back a couple of hundred years. It could not be remade today and still retain all the wild political incorrectness. Protests and boycotts would stop the movie from being made if word got out of it's script's contents.

A great, emotionally draining, disturbing and thoroughly unique movie that will always stand alone and cannot be remade without huge rewrites.

One brief note of interest. One of the female leads, Doris Dudley, lived about a quarter mile from me in the early 1980's. The location was a little community called Jacobia, Tx. Her obituary says Greenville, Tx. which is also correct.

She invited me and my parents to some kind of little get together at her modest country home. She was outgoing, friendly and yet had a powerful energy to her that somehow made me understand why she was an actress.

She told me she was in the movies many years ago and her movie/stage name was Doris Dudley. She originally introduced herself as Doris Jenkins.

She mentioned that she knew Cary Grant. She may have said she worked with him but I'm not sure. She was in her mid 60's and long since retired from being an actress by the time I met her. She loved her dogs. And shortly after I met her she learned she had terminal cancer and died shortly thereafter. When I asked her about it, I was struck by how unafraid she was of dying. I brought her a little newspaper article about someone beating cancer I thought might cheer her up. But she did not need any help. Her courage in facing death infused me with courage. I shall never forget her.

There is only one biography of her I can find on the internet. She was a lovely, dynamic woman. She was terrific in this movie. I miss visiting with her.

The print of this film (shown on TCM) suffers from the ravages of time. I wish I could say that the genius of the film shines through, but I cannot.

It is an interesting film. Certainly a curiosity. The unusual use of different film stocks and the selective use of color make it a unique experience.

The subject of the film, a misanthropic painter who offers little in the way of redeeming value, makes the film an interesting story with a hollow center. Charles Strickland (George Sanders) is a man who sacrifices everything in life to retire to Tahiti to paint. Based loosely on the life of Gaugin, the film has an interesting cast of characters that surround Strickland, notably Herbert Marshall as Geoffrey Wolfe and Steven Geray as Dirk Stroeve.

One might feel compelled to watch the story of so unusual a protagonist, but he is not merely indifferent to others; he often goes out of his way to denigrate or insult them. When we finally see the artwork that has driven this man's obsession--if that's what it is--it is anticlimactic.

This work of fiction could have made Strickland a hero, fighting for his artistic vision. Instead, he comes across as little more than a craftsman who does even value his own work. This is disappointing.