Quartet **** (1948, Dirk Bogarde, Honor Blackman, Susan Shaw, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Jack Watling, Mai Zetterling, Nora Swinburne, Cecil Parker, George Cole) – Classic Movie Review 3180

In this 1948 British black and white compendium movie, Quartet, esteemed author W Somerset Maugham plays host and himself introduces each of four entertaining, superbly cast short films of his own stories, with four different directors. Ken Annakin directs The Colonel’s Lady; Arthur Crabtree directs The Kite; Harold French directs The Alien Corn and Ralph Smart directs The Facts of Life, all of them adapted for the screen by R C Sherriff.

The first and the last are perhaps the most satisfying. In the first, The Facts of Life, Jack Watling plays Nicky, a young tennis player who falls in with a bad blonde Jeanne (Mai Zetterling) on the Riviera and fails to follow his father’s advice, in a segment that also stars Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Ian Fleming, Jack Raine, Angela Baddeley and James Robertson Justice.

In the last, The Colonel’s Lady, Nora Swinburne stars as Mrs Peregrine, the dowdy wife who has a best-selling hit with a collection of racy love poems – to the shocked, astonished bewilderment of her stuffy middle-aged husband Colonel Peregrine (Cecil Parker). Swinburne and Parker are marvellous in this entertaining segment.

In The Alien Corn, Dirk Bogarde stars as George Bland, in which an aspiring pianist devotes himself to sole passion in life of perfecting his art but finds he hasn’t the talents to reach the heights he craves after Lea Makart (Françoise Rosay) tells him that he has no chance to become a professional top-flight pianist. The segment also stars Honor Blackman as Paula, Raymond Lovell as Sir Frederick Bland and Irene Browne as Lady Bland.

In The Kite, George Cole stars as Herbert Sunbury, a young man who lives at home and loves kite flying, but goes against the wishes of his overbearing mother (Hermione Baddeley) and marries Betty Baker (Susan Shaw), the girl he has been dating.

With strong performances from the special cast, a lively score by John Greenwood and an outstanding production designed George Provis, with special effects Albert Whitlock, this show is the perfect showcase for Maugham’s works.

Also in the cast are Mervyn Johns, Bernard Lee, Claude Allister, Felix Aylmer, Johnny Briggs, Nigel Buchanan, Cyril Chamberlain, David Cole, Henry Edwards, Lyn Evans, Mary Hilton, Wilfrid Hyde White, Frederick Leister, George Merritt, Clive Morton, Jack Raine, Cyril Raymond, Ernest Thesiger, George Thorpe, Linden Travers, Maurice Denham, Bernard Lee, James Hayter, Frederick Leister and Margaret Withers.

Quartet proved a big hit and two popular sequels, Trio (1950) and Encore (1951), followed.

An understandably rather bitter W Somerset Maugham recalled: ‘In my twenties, the critics said I was brutal. In my thirties, they said I was flippant. In my forties, they said I was cynical. In my fifties they said I was competent. And then, in my sixties, they said I was superficial.’

The compendium movie is also known as an anthology film, an omnibus film, or a portmanteau film.

Quartet is directed by Ken Annakin, Arthur Crabtree, Harold French and Ralph Smart, runs 120 minutes, is made by Gainsborough Pictures, is released by General Film Distributors (1948) (UK) and Eagle-Lion Films (1949) (US), is written by R C Sherriff, based on W Somerset Maugham’s short stories, is shot in black and white by Ray Elton and Reginald H Wyer, is produced by Sydney Box and Anthony Darnborough, is scored by John Greenwood and designed by George Provis with effects by Albert Whitlock.

It is shot Gainsborough Studios, Islington, London.

Dirk Bogarde is back at the piano in Song Without End (1960). Bernard Lee and Honor Blackman are both in Goldfinger (1964), though the Ian Fleming in this film is not the same man who wrote the Bond novels.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3180

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com