Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

johndunbar-580-920543 The most extraordinary feature of this film is the incredible smoothness it adds to the story line; it's a masterpiece of great dialogue and incredible actors to deliver the story. Who has ever seen any better, and unobtrusive, acting than that of the likes of Saunders, Marshall and the relatively unknown but great actor Steven Gary (who plays Dirk Strouve) ? One will never see another film to exceed this one in these respects.

bkoganbing Herbert Marshall plays W. Somerset Maugham in fact if not name in The Moon And Sixpence as he narrates the story of how his life intersected with that of George Sanders a man who left middle class respectability to do his thing with painting, first in Paris and then the South Seas. Marshall is his erudite best and Sanders once again is a cad.When Marshall first knows Sanders he's the soul of Victorian rectitude, no one suspecting what is beneath the surface. So when one fine day he up and leaves his wife Molly Lamont to go live the Bohemian life as a painter in Paris it shocks everybody. In fact Lamont prevails on Marshall to go to Paris to see what brought this about.Somerget Maugham's view on human relations and the creative soul are once again given an airing in The Moon And Sixpence. Maugham was a gay man, but there are certain gay men who truly do not like women on most levels. They make too many demands on the creative man, fascinated though they might be by him. That view is in full force when dealing with Lamont and with Doris Dudley who plays a married woman who leaves her husband Steven Geray to take up with Sanders in Paris. His ideal woman is Tahitian Elena Verdugo, pretty and sexy without too much education who takes care of man's physical needs with no demands. Women were not Maugham's favorites. You can see that in work like Of Human Bondage with Mildred Rogers or in Rain with Sadie Thompson. And I can't forget The Razor's Edge and the part that Gene Tierney plays.Sanders is a caddish as he ever has gotten on the big screen for the first two thirds of the film. But in Tahiti with no demands on him he becomes a mensch. For myself staying a mensch when life does make demands on you is the true test. But what do I know? The Moon And Sixpence is Maugham at his misanthropic best. Sanders and Marshall top a fine cast in a film that could have been a real classic with a bigger budget from an A list studio. Herbert Marshall would be the narrator author W. Somerset Maugham again in The Razor's Edge which is a better film. This one in fact did get an Oscar nomination for Dimitri Tiomkin's musical scoring. The Moon And Sixpence can definitely hold its own.

krosny-244-673957 I will not attempt to write a "complete" review of this movie. Just note a couple of highlights.I recently saw this movie for the first time on TCM. It is one of the most "startling" and highly original movies I have seen from that era of filmmaking.Almost never does a movie affect me emotionally--not only as I saw it but even a couple of weeks later I am still affected by it.Among the many things that are so powerful is the relentless negativity of the George Sanders' character throughout. And yet he makes us feel he is on a mission to be true to himself and to fulfill his destiny without apology.To combine these elements in one character is something I have never seen in any movie. It left me confused emotionally and yet felt admiringly of someone who can eschew all human concern for others(with one exception which I will not spoil) to relentlessly pursue what he perceives as his truth and destiny.It is a brilliant achievement in George Sanders' acting and for the directors' unapologetic vision of the movie.I have to be careful not to spoil, but among many amazing surprises is how another artists' wife(Blanche Stroeve played by Doris Dudley whom I knew in real life) reacts to Sanders after she, at her husband's insistence, nurses him back to health. It is an amazing scene. Yet somehow we understand that Sander's purpose is so well-defined and his masculinity is so caveman-like that she cannot help but respond to him.Definitely not politically correct. I cannot imagine a scene like this even being allowed to be shot in this way in any modern movie.Speaking of political correctness, other surprises abound in this area particularly during the time the Sanders character moves to Tahiti.Not to spoil but listen closely as a certain older woman who interacts with Sanders describe her long ago love affairs and the character of the men she was involved with. If any woman was to pine for love affairs like she describes in today's world, she would be denounced by every women's group on the planet. And yet she pines for those days with infectious gusto and enthusiasm.A movie shot like this today would set women back a couple of hundred years. It could not be remade today and still retain all the wild political incorrectness. Protests and boycotts would stop the movie from being made if word got out of it's script's contents.A great, emotionally draining, disturbing and thoroughly unique movie that will always stand alone and cannot be remade without huge rewrites.One brief note of interest. One of the female leads, Doris Dudley, lived about a quarter mile from me in the early 1980's. The location was a little community called Jacobia, Tx. Her obituary says Greenville, Tx. which is also correct. She invited me and my parents to some kind of little get together at her modest country home. She was outgoing, friendly and yet had a powerful energy to her that somehow made me understand why she was an actress.She told me she was in the movies many years ago and her movie/stage name was Doris Dudley. She originally introduced herself as Doris Jenkins.She mentioned that she knew Cary Grant. She may have said she worked with him but I'm not sure. She was in her mid 60's and long since retired from being an actress by the time I met her. She loved her dogs. And shortly after I met her she learned she had terminal cancer and died shortly thereafter. When I asked her about it, I was struck by how unafraid she was of dying. I brought her a little newspaper article about someone beating cancer I thought might cheer her up. But she did not need any help. Her courage in facing death infused me with courage. I shall never forget her.There is only one biography of her I can find on the internet. She was a lovely, dynamic woman. She was terrific in this movie. I miss visiting with her.

byoolives The story alone is worth viewing. The very idea of a person abandoning their family in order to follow one's dream, is compelling enough. George Sander's performance as well as Herbert Marshall as Somerset Maughm are both fist rate. No one could have done a finer job at playing the tortured cad then Sanders. If they had another one of those silly top 100 lists, this one for best type casting in a film about cads, then Sanders would win in a trot. He was in real life it appears, the very cad that he played so convincingly on screen. A book was even written about him by an actor friend, Brian Ahearne. The title of the book is "A Dreadful Man". The actor Ronald Coleman would not even allow Sanders in his presence, as he found his disdain and pessimism to much to bear. At the age of 65 Sanders committed suicide in a Paris hotel room just as he had promised actor David Niven years earlier, claiming that by that time he would no longer have interest in women or anything else. (Consult Niven's book "Bring On The Empty Horses") I can understand one user's previous comment about this being Sanders only great role. But Mr. Sanders won an Oscar for playing another cad, the rascal theater critic in "All About Eve". One of my favorite lines in that movie is when he replies to a very beautiful young starlet(Marilyn Monroe) who he has accompanied to a dinner party saying "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point none the less".