Il settimo peccato

"The Seventh Sin" from 1957 stars Eleanor Parker, Bill Travers, George Sanders, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Francoise Rosay.

Parker plays Carolyn Carwin, living in postwar Hong Kong with her husband, Dr. Walter Corwin (Travers) but is having an affair with Paul (Aumont). She never really loved her husband - she used him to get away from her family - but he has always loved her. For reasons known only to herself, she finds him physically repulsive. Bill Travers? That was the first dumb thing.

Walter is going into a remote village to fight the cholera epidemic. He gives Carolyn a choice - she can accompany him or he will cause a huge scandal in the divorce. Then he suggests a third option - if Paul will divorce his wife and marry her immediately, he won't give her any trouble. He knows full well that Paul won't divorce his wife and is proved correct. The two leave for the village.

Once there, they meet Tim Waddington (Sanders) who picks up on their marital problems. Gradually Carolyn becomes aware of her husband's dedication to his work and her own selfishness and narcissism.

Previous versions of The Painted Veil take place in an earlier time, and the trip to the village is harrowing. It becomes obvious that Walter hopes his wife dies, or he doesn't care, and he certainly doesn't care if she contracts cholera when they arrive. Post- WWII, they don't have a bad time of it travel-wise.

Parker is beautiful as the imperious Carolyn, who finds the village a growing experience, and Sanders cast against type is a real bright spot, giving a wonderful performance. There are nice scenes between Carolyn and the nun at the orphanage (Rosay) who understands Carolyn better than she thinks. Travers is sympathetic as the hard-working doctor who only wanted to love his wife and have her love him.

The Maugham story of The Painted Veil is a strong one, but it's hard for this version to compete with either version, the 1934 with Greta Garbo or the 2006 with its brilliant cinematography. Though it's not as good, it is still absorbing. I haven't read the story, so I'm not sure what the original ending is - all three versions have different endings.

Somerset Maugham's taste for exotic locales is used to good purpose in this story of how a doctor's wife "finds" herself after an extramarital affair. I happened to catch this film half-way through (missed Parker's affair with Aumont), however, the Chinese locale and the level of acting kept me watching until the end, especially as I had just seen John Ford's "Seven Women" recently on the TCM channel. The question is, why did Ford's movie fail (for me), and this one succeed? Both were shepherded by distinguished directors, and the casting in both is impressive --so should we fault the script? In fact, one might say that the Neame & Minnelli team elicted better performances than did Ford in his China setting. Despite the impressive cast and Bancroft's intensity, everything about Ford's film seemed "wrong," and the setting in China was totally incidental to the struggle between the two leading ladies. In "Seventh Sin," however, Parker's struggle seemed very real, despite her cool demeanor (what would Deborah Kerr have done with this role?), and her inter-action, and later friendship with the Mother Superior appears honestly won.

Unlike another reviewer, I did not think that Bill Travers' performance was wooden. His reticent honesty works well here. It is a decided contrast to the stagy performance he gave with Jenifer Jones in "Barretts of Wimpole Street," where he seemed to shout through his role (this movie failed for me on other counts, too). In "Seventh Sin," the casting of George Sanders as the sympathetic local who marries a Chinese works quite well as a foil to the bluff but kind Travers, and for once, Sanders acts against type and gives a commendable, unmannered performance. In fact he is quite likable and also mastered some Chinese for the role. His Chinese wife is not credited, but I found her acting to be stiff and lacking in warmth or charm; her accent and the year 1957 when the movie was filmed made it likely that she was had spent at least a decade in Taiwan, rather than being born in the "imperial" family that Sanders claims and escaping to Hongkong.

As for the Chinese/Hong Kong setting, one wonders whether it could have been interchangeable with Algeria, or Africa. Was it incidental to the plot, as one could argue with "Seven Women"? No, I don't think so.

A character like the one Parker portrays had to discover her inner resources in a foreign country, and among persons who were less than amenable to her -- the Chinese, whose language she didn't understand, and the sisters of the convent -- definitely an essential feature of the Maugham original. Francoise Rosay is particularly convincing as the Mother Superior; this is a role that cuts to the heart of the character (unlike Margaret Leighton's role vis a vis Anne Bancroft's in "Seven Women"). The Mother Superior is not a one-dimensional person, but someone who has lived and who ultimately is the one who understands Travers' final words. She is able to interpret them correctly for the Parker, thereby absolving the guilty wife of her personal anguish. This is a very moving way to end the story, and contrasts with the heroic but blatant staging of Bancroft's suicide in "Seven Women." These parallels may not seem obvious to others, but they kept cropping up for me as I watched it.

I think for those who are interested in how China/Hong Kong is presented in Western film (compare for example, with "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" or "Sand Pebbles"), and for the rendering of stories by literary authors such as Maugham, "Seventh Sin" carries a sincerity of tone which makes it notable. Also, anything directed by Ronald Neame ("Blithe Spririt," "Major Barbara," "This Happy Breed" and other distinguished films), not to mention Vincenti Minnelli, makes it is definitely worth a look.

I love Somerset Maugham's novels, but they tend to be full of internal monologues and emotional and spiritual struggles that can be difficult to dramatize (his short stories make much better material for movies). THE PAINTED VEIL is a terrific book and a good read, veering from sexual melodrama to spiritual regeneration, full of psychological insight, tension and vivid descriptions of life in China during a cholera epidemic.

But this movie is just dreadful. It's dull, literal-minded and a travesty of a great story and promising concept. The credibility problems start (but don't end) with the fact that handsome Bill Travers was miscast as the cuckold. Tall and masculine with sensual features, a brooding sexiness, and a resonant, beautiful voice, it's absurd that we are expected to believe he is unappealing to Eleanor Parker. How can she not want to grab him and ride him ten ways from Sunday? I have often liked beautiful Eleanor Parker, but her archness here is hard to take and not what the part needs. The only bright spot is George Sanders, cast against type as a warm, sympathetic guy.

One thing I'm curious about is why Vincente Minnelli abandoned the project (his name appears nowhere in the final credits). Had he directed it (preferably in Technicolor) it might at least have been more enjoyable. Skip this dreary soap opera. Or if you see it and actually like it, read Somerset Maugham's novel, which is far better and certainly more entertaining.

The Seventh Sin is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel, "The Painted Veil," about the redemption of a hedonistic woman. Dr. Walter Carwin (Bill Travers) discovers that his wife, Carolyn (Eleanor Parker), is having a torrid affair with a married man, Paul Duvel (Jean-Pierre Aumont). He demands that she choose, and, as he expected, she chooses Duvel who then dumps her. Bereft, she resentfully goes with her husband to rural China, where he joins the forces fighting a cholera epidemic.

There they meet Tim Waddington (George Sanders), a government functionary who takes Carolyn under his wing. They visit to the local convent, which is also an orphanage and hospital where we witness this vain, shallow woman's abrupt metamorphosis: her maternal instincts bloom at the sight of all the newborns in the maternity ward, and she offers to volunteer. Sudden satori? It happens, I gather, but Carolyn has never seen babies before? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the circumstances-- i.e., her boredom.

Never mind. It's a wonderful development, no? No. The Mother Superior (the legendary Françoise Rosay) refuses Carolyn's offer on the grounds that it isn't properly motivated. Seriously. She echoes the original novel: "You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul."

Wrong. In fact, on the contrary, doing good work is a source of both peace and pleasure. That would be a worthy theme for a movie about a woman finally realizing that giving is more satisfying than receiving. But-- and here's the underlying problem-- Carolyn isn't a credible woman, she's a construct similar to most of Maugham's women, and not a few of his men: European expats immersed in a foreign culture-- more like a Petri dish of anonymous humans than an actual civilization-- that nurtures their growth. "A Passage to India" is arguably an exception. Even so, when it comes to writing about White people unmoored in the world, give me Andre Malraux or Graham Greene.

Hardly similar to the 1934 film The Painted Veil, Eleanor Parker starred in a 1957 remake, The Seventh Sin. I saw the cast list of Bill Travers and George Sanders, and naturally I assumed George would be the rigid, unforgiving husband with Bill as the young lover. Imagine my surprise to find that Bill was cast as the husband!

Eleanor's young lover was a French actor, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and George played a friend in their new surroundings when they relocate to treat the cholera epidemic. I absolutely loved George in this movie, both his character and the spunky delivery he brought to his lines. He's funny and charming, but without the acerbic Addison Dewitt typecast. Eleanor and Bill are also very good in the film, and with both characters being extremely flawed, it's hard to make them likable. But you feel very sorry for Bill, and Eleanor is so beautiful, it's hard to believe she ever does anything wrong. Even though Bill treats her infidelity as justification for a thinly-veiled death penalty, he acts out from being in pain rather than from cruelty. If you have never seen version of this classic story, you can try either film. This one has a different ending than the original, but don't let that stand in your way. Pick which cast appeals to you and get ready for a very good acting and in a very heavy story. And just forget about Ellen Corby's "French" accent.