W. Somerset Maugham's intense character studies are all but impossible to adequately reflect on screen - even in a film that takes 2½ hours. That said, Edmund Goulding assembled a strong cast here to deliver a complex and nuanced series of inter-connected stories that centred around the relationship between "Larry" (Tyrone Power) and "Isabel" (Gene Tierney). Suffering from itchy feet the former left his fiancée and set off into the world. After the Wall Street Crash, she is invited to live with her socially ambitious uncle "Elliott" (Clifton Webb) in Paris and some ten years after he left, she is reunited with her erstwhile beau. Now, she finds herself completely smitten even though she is now married to the somewhat aptly named "Gray" (John Payne) and this is where the scheming Tierney comes into her own. Deftly, sometimes even cruelly, playing a game that pays scant regard for the feelings of her husband and showing a gritty determination to get what she wants. Power plays his character well, too - a straight as a bat, decent, human being; and with an an excellent effort from Anne Baxter as the tragedy-struck, slippery-slope headed "Sophie"; an equally on form Webb and a measured effort (and narration) from Herbert Marshall as the author himself, the acting talent on offer here is formidable. The adaptation, though is a bit meandering and the production as a whole just lacks something. Passion? That spark? I don't really know how to put a finger on it, but somehow it just doesn't quite catch fire.
