CinemaSerf

George Sanders is good, in what's quite an untypical type of role for him, in this otherwise rather plodding and wordy drama that has shades of the life of Paul Gauguin to it. He's a stockbroker ("Strickland") who tires of his life and his wife so decides to take up a career painting and living in Paris. The only constant in his life is his long suffering friend "Wolfe" (narrator Herbert Marshall) but even he loses interest as his friend becomes more odiously manipulative, introspective - and broke - as time goes by. Oddly enough, however desperate he becomes, he refuses to sell his works - and that poverty and a constant search for inspiration ultimately sees him in the South Seas where he finds some semblance of peace before his mortality catches up with him! At times the two-header boozy lunches between Sanders and Marshall give the script some pith, but that this selfish creature could make and break marriages quite so readily does test belief and I felt increasingly disinterested in the characters or the story on display here. The production is really quite basic and like so many of W. Somerset Maugham's stories - there is a distinct lack of joy and a surfeit of obsessiveness with the proceedings. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood - but I was a bit bored with this.