Maugham into Sherriff
Quartet consists of four of Mr. Somerset Maugham's short stories, The Facts of Life, The Alien Corn, The Kite and The Colonel's Lady, plus their adaptation into screen plays by Mr. R. C. Sherriff. The filming of four separate stories unlinked by any central theme is in the nature of an experiment, and for those who are interested in the technique of film-making this book will prove of value. They will have the opportunity of studying the manifold additions and omissions, the altered endings, the extra characters, the new scenes, etc., deemed necessary by Mr. Sherriff to give better screen perspective to these tales ; but for the ordinary, perhaps ,kmimaginative, reader, and particularly one who has not seen the ifinished film product, the originals and the adaptations must seem so utterly apart one from the other as hardly to bear comparison.
After all, Mr. Maugham's stories are amongst the best in the world ty virtue of his writing of them. Without words, patterned to his /order and stamped with his particular brand of cynical detachment, without his talent for creating atmosphere, character and scene by /juggling with words so astutely, Mr. Maugham's stories would not be very important. What he best creates cannot, surely, be trans-. tated into any other medium. Simply to seed his dialogue from its (border of thoughtful comment makes, if not a poor film, at any rate poor reading. It is, of course, unjust to compare works that should read with works that should be seen, and in this book Mr. Sherriff bears under a disadvantage. His tools, as it were, are left behind while Mr. Maugham's are very much in evidence.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
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