THE MOON AND SIXPENCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 212, 16 July 1943, Page 13

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE

(United Artists)

ITHOUT. wishing to ring ....any. Victory. Bells- orto be regarded as a Pollyanna, I begin to detect faint signs that the cinema is growing up.

I am not referring to prodigy-pictures like Pygmalion, Major Barbera, Citizen Kane, and The Grapes of Wrath, but when we find Moontide, Tortilla Flat, and The Moon and Sixpence all screening together in the one week (as they are at present in Wellington), then there is some reason, as Mr. Churchill would put it, for sober confidence. The Moon and Sixpence is based on the novel by Somerset Maugham, which in turn was obviously. based on, or at least suggested by, the life of Gaugin. It may not be an important book; in fact, it may be a rather shallow one; but on the screen it does make absorbing, and above all, adult entertainment. Like Gaugin, Charles Strickland (George Sanders), is a respectable, conventional financier until middle-age when, without scruple or regrets, he suddently deserts his wife and family because he has the urge to become a painter. He goes to Paris, and starves in the conventional garret, but this is the only conventional thing Charles Strickland does. Having completely ruined a fellow-artist’s hap--piness, again without a trace of remorse, he finally goes to Tahiti, where he marries a native girl. When he dies of leprosy, most of his best paintings are destroyed at his own request. But he is later recognised as a great artist.

Hollywood has been trying to film this story for years. All the major studios have had a shot at it, but each time they started they came up against the

apparently insurmountable Hays Office ban on anything that may seem to condone lax behaviour. David Loew, the producer, and Albert Lewin the director, finally solved this problem by taking the revolutionary step of filming the ‘book almost exactly as the author wrote it. Though their technique of story-tell-ing is not without precedent (c.f. Citizen Kane), their triumph lies in their dispassionate approach. Most screen entertainment depends on the thesis that the audience must identify itself with the characters; must take sides with the "goodies" against the "baddies." But The Moon. and ‘Sixpence simply says, in effect, "Here is a man called Charles Strickland who led an unusual life. But we do not pass judgment. We think his character is interesting enough in itself." Actually, from’ a technical viewpoint, the film uses a very elaborate style of narration, but the impression you get is of "straight" reporting- simple and impartial. The greatest single factor in the success of this method is the performance of Herbert Marshall. Yes, Herbert Marshall, of all people. He is so perfectly in character as the precise, rather stuffy Englishman who is the friend of Strickland’s deserted: wife, and ' who tells the story in retrospect. Marshall’s voice has always seemed to me his best asset-and it is his voice that is most used. With such a narrator, you cannot do anything but take a detached view of the narrative.

There are other noteworthy aspects. For instance, the thoroughly convincing performance of George Sanders as Strickland. Again, there is the element of conflict between the sexes. At the last, Strickland does self-consciously use the word "love" in a sense other than cynical, Is this a concession to popular demand? Or is it true to character? I don’t quite know, but it certainly does represent something of a final victory for womankind who, up till then, have been consistently blackguarded. Yet, even this may be rather cold comfort for the feminists, for this victory for her sex is secured, you will notice, not by a civilised woman like Strickland’s first wife or his mistress (both of whom he despises), but by a Tahitian girl, who dumbly worships the artist because — well, simply because he is a white man and handsome, and treats her as a chattel! /