The Moon and Sixpence

-The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham's account of the life of artist Paul Gauguin, was brought to the screen as a labor of love by writer/director Albert Lewin. George Sanders plays Charles Strickland, a staid London broker who kicks over the traces to become an artist. Strickland pursues his ...more

Nobody played a cad better than the supercilious George Sanders, and rarely did he have a better showcase role than that in The Moon and Sixpence. Sanders was born to play W. Somerset Maugham's Charles Strickland; no other actor could have conveyed the intelligence, the cruelty, the disdain, and the selfishness and yet so effectively laced it with a tortured melancholy, an inner sadness, and a fiercely guarded vulnerability. Misogynistic and often unpleasant, Sanders' Strickland is nonetheless ...more