Ageing, observant novelist Somer- set Maugham was honoured in "Quartet" not only by the fact that he was allowed to wisecrack his verbal champagne on the bows of the story, but by the treatment accorded, these four short vignettes. The full treatment—a battery of four extremely competent and imaginative producers, a cast scintillating if not star studded, a faithful adherence to the spirit and manner of the original stories—was given the film: and it succeeded.

Only objection: that after having seen both Paisa and Shoeshine within a couple of weeks before this British effort Which laid the New York critics in admiring rows along the Broadway aisles, the film had an inevitable and somewhat unsatisfying staginess. This may be due quite as much to novelist Maugham's choice of settings, his accurately documented observation of the relevant minor material to illumine the lives of his characters.