The Moon & Sixpence (VCI/Upgraded DVD Edition/Two Versions)

 

Picture: C/C-     Sound: C     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

NOTE:  VCI recently updated this title to include the version with color sequences missing from the original release.  That looks better, but the print still has flaws.  Sound is the smear, but it is nice for the record the company was able to secure the other print.

 

 

Films about art and artists are not easy to do and definitely come with the baggage of one format commenting on another.  Albert Lewin’s The Moon & Sixpence (1943) is an interesting and sometimes campy attempt to cover the life of the great French painted Paul Gauguin.  George Saunders is Charles Strictland, a stockbroker who leaves the business to go painting.  He is a bit misogynistic throughout, something that becomes flat, cardboard and tired after a while, but is at least gutsy.

 

Herbert Marshall plays George Wolfe, who is a character in the narrative, but also the narrator.  The result of this is that the film, despite all of its ambitions and serious attempt to show the life of the painter, becomes a combination of sometimes-campy melodrama and semi-documentary in the old single voice-over sense.  An ending was changed and we cannot go into that without ruining the film, but it is not a great film.  Still, it is fascinating in what was attempted, even when it does not work.

 

The 1.33 x 1 black and white image is soft, has detail issues, some aliasing and the Video Black is off a bit with the image lighter than it should be.  The final sequence was originally in color, but not on this print.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is a little better, but it also shows its age.  Extras include trailers for five other VCI DVDs and text biographies on Sanders, Marshall and Lewin.  All in all, this is a curio finally out on DVD and that’s not bad.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo