This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is Adaptations, which is a pretty easy one, since so many books and plays have been turned into movies. So the only thing left to do was to make certain I hadn't used any of my selections in the past few years, and to try to come up with a theme-within-a-theme, especially since I've been working obscene amounts of overtime and a theme-within-a-theme is actually a way to make this easier for me. With that in mind....
Sadie Thompson (1928). Based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham, this silent movie tells the story of Sadie Thompson (Gloria Swanson), the prostitute who got driven out of the continental US and is now in the South Pacific, where she meets a bunch of Marines (including director Raoul Walsh before he lost his eye), as well as a minister from the US (Lionel Barrymore) who decides Sadie Must Be Reformed. However, he becomes obsessed with her. Jeanne Eagels, who would go on to star in a film version of Maugham's The Letter before her untimely death in 1929, played Sadie on stage. The movie was also remade at the beginning of the sound era as Rain with Joan Crawford and Walter Huston.
The Painted Veil (1934). Greta Garbo plays an Austrian woman married off by her father to British doctor Herbert Marshall, who is going to be studying cholera in Hong Kong and dealing with any outbreaks in mainland China. Garbo not knowing anybody in Hong Kong, she meets civil servant George Brent and the two start an affair which continues until her husband finds out. She has the chance to redeem herself by following her husband to the Chinese hinterland in a cholera outbreak. Based on a story by Somerset Maugham, this was overshadowed by that other 1934 Maugham adaptation, the Bette Davis version of Of Human Bondage.
Quartet (1948). British author Somerset Maugham shows up on screen to introduce this anthology of four of his short stories which star a multitude of British character actors and a few who became pretty big; among the cast are Honor Blackman, Bernard Lee, Hermione Baddeley, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne (who played Caldicott and Chalmers in The Lady Vanishes and several other films), and Dirk Bogarde. The movie was a surprising success and resulted in two further anthologies of Maugham short stories, Trio and Encore.
3 comments:
Love a theme within the theme!
I thought Sadie Thompson was a bit ridiculous even taking in the constraints of silent film but that doesn't mean I wasn't entertained by it. Gloria was always a distinctive performer and her exaggerated features suited the role.
Of the three versions I've seen of The Painted Veil (the Naomi Watts self named remake and the Eleanor Parker take renamed The Seventh Sin are the others) this Garbo version is my least favorite. Garbo is magnetic as always and the cast surrounding her is good but the censor's influence cuts some of the guts out of the story.
I enjoyed Quartet was terrific but I actually liked the other two compilation films you mentioned more than this one.
I also have a theme within the theme of sorts but a more personal one. I chose stage to screen adaptations but ones where I had seen both the film and a production of the play on Broadway.
Into the Woods (2014)-Adaptation of the Sondheim musical reimaging of classic fairy tales-Rapunzel, Cinderella, the Baker & His Wife etc.-with an impressive cast (Meryl Streep, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman among others) is enjoyable but misses the magic of the stage production despite CGI and the utilization of location shooting. I saw this in 1988 at the Martin Beck Theatre, though Phylicia Rashad had by that time replaced Bernadette Peters who had originated the role of the Witch.
Gypsy (1962)-Star powered (Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden in the leads) filmization of the classic stage play based on the memoirs of ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee growing up in the shadow of her more talented sister June and her fearsomely aggressive stage mother Mama Rose that Ethel Merman made legendary when it opened in 1959 with a score by Jules Styne & Stephen Sondheim. I saw the 2003 revival with Bernadette Peters as Mama Rose at the St. James Theatre.
MacBeth (1948)-Moody expressionistic take on the Shakespeare “Scottish Play” about the price of unfettered ambition and lust for power by a courtier (Orson Welles) and his rapacious wife (Jeanette Nolan). I saw the production starring Christopher Plummer (he was very good) and Glenda Jackson (she was electrifying!) at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in 1988.
I saw the remake of The Painted Veil with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. Not surprised Of Human Bondage distracted, Bette Davis was wonderful in that.
I saw Sadie Thompson on screen and restored by the Eastman House. I enjoyed it quite a bit and wondered how it would have been with Jeanne Engels in the role. I haven’t seen The Painted Veil but one day I will and I think I saw Quartet but when I was very little and would need to see it again.
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