Needs more sin

British author Somerset Maugham has had his work adapted for movies a surprising number of times, with several of the works getting multiple adaptations over the decades. One such story is Maugham's 1925 novel The Painted Veil which I haven't read, but which was adapted under that title as a Greta Garbo vehicle in the 1930s, and again about 20 years ago (I haven't seen the 2006 version). In between, in the 1950s, the story got another film version, but this time with the title The Seventh Sin.

In the Greta Garbo movie, and apparently in the novella, the story begins with the early adulthood of the main female character, who marries a doctor who is going to do charity work in China at a chaotic period in Chinese history. In The Seventh Sin, however, the action opens in Hong Kong, 1949, which is a big issue for multiple reasons. One is that we miss all of the main characters' back stories, especially the main female character Carolyn (Eleanor Parker). Plus, by this time in 1949, the Communists would likely have been causing westerns to leave China, especially missionaries; see the movie Satan Never Sleeps.

In any case, Carolyn is married to Walter (Bill Travers), a doctor whom she had met when he was in the US trying to requisition medical equipment some time back. They got married and moved out to Hong Kong, but it's a boring life for Carolyn, who has taken on a suave lover in the form of Paul (Jean-Pierre Aumont), who himself is married with a wife and kids although we never see those. Indeed, we barely see Paul. Walter returns from work one day to the signs that Carolyn has been carrying on a relationship with some man not her husband, and confronts her about it. On learning his wife has betrayed him, Walter gives Carolyn a choice: face a messy divorce or convince Paul to get a divorce from his wife, knowing full well that Paul doesn't want the public humiliation and that Paul's wife wouldn't grant the divorce anyway.

The other choice involves not only staying with Walter, but accompanying him into mainland China: there's yet another cholera epidemic in one of those Hollywood Chinatowns, and the western doctors and Catholic convents are doing the good work of treating those poor benighted Chinese. Carolyn can follow Walter to the hinterlands, basically in exile.

When they reach their new home, they find they have a neighbor in Tim (George Sanders), who seems to know all the local gossip but has no other real purpose in the story. Carolyn grows tired of the loneliness, and decides she wants to go to the convent and find out what she can do to the locals to help as a layperson. Complications ensue in that she finds out she's pregnant, while Walter contracts cholera.

There are multiple problems with The Seventh Sin. One is how we never see the back story that would drive Carolyn to start an affair in the first place. Walter here is mildly neglectful to the extent that he's consumed with his work, but other than that he's presented as bland, not even enough of a sufferer to be a saint. Aumont is also underused, while the mainland part of the story goes on too long.

Ultimately, The Seventh Sin feels like a movie where someone took part of a story and padded it to feature length, when what really should have been done is to take a whole story and adapt it to that feature length. I'd definitely rather recommend the Greta Garbo movie instead.