The Moon and Sixpence

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...

I am so torn with this movie. The drive to create, the artistic urge can be so overwhelming that some people eschew everything, all relationships and comforts, to pursue it. Humans are driven to make things, to create. Art and the way it tells a story is part of being human. Even if no one sees what is created, the creative act still has meaning. All of this is the central theme of this movie. And so much of how it is depicted is very affecting to watch. Then there are the other parts of the movie.

George Sanders as Charles Strickland is well cast, his natural aloofness aiding in keeping us at a distance from this artist. He's sleepwalking through life, with a respectable job and family until he can't stand it anymore and leaves to becom...