Imagine the plot of Christmas Holiday, a film starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly. Did you think of a jolly musical with yuletide trimmings? Well, scrap all of that. Directed by Robert Siodmak and inspired by W. Somerset Maugham’s novel of the same name, Christmas Holiday is a film noir as bleak as a barren […]
The World of W. Somerset Maugham: ‘Quartet’ (1948), ‘Trio’ (1950) and ‘Encore’ (1951)
“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 incompetent and then in my sixties they said I was superficial.” So speaks W. Somerset Maugham in his wry introduction to Quartet, an […]