There's a Term Paper waiting to be written on the 'portmanteau' film and its first task will be an attempt to clarify just what it is. The purist would probably argue that it is a film of clearly defined segments - three, four, five or even more - each boasting a different director and possibly a different writer(s); each segment reaching a definite conclusion and then fading to Black to be succeeded by the Title Card for the next segment. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find a masterpiece like Un Carnet de bal, the work of one director, Julien Duvivier and one principal writer, Henri Jeanson, in which a newly widowed Marie Bell decides on a whim to trace the men who shared the floor with her at the very first Ball she attended as a young girl and whose names, of course, are all on the Dance Card she has kept all these years. In effect there are seven segments within the film and one character (Christine) common to all. In between these extremes we find permutations of both, in some cases separate stories with a common link (Souvenirs Perdus - stories behind four pieces of lost property - Train Of Events, the lives of several people involved in a train crash, etc. Quartet is one of several films that dramatise short stories by one author (others are Le Plaisir, Guy de Maupassant and Full House, O'Henry) in this case William Somerset Maugham and it falls firmly into the purist camp having four directors and four title cards. It also features an on screen introduction by the author himself (something not possible, of course, in the case of O'Henry and Maupassant)which adds little either way. The Facts Of Life kicks things off with a jaunty, sprightly tale of a naive, unworldly youth, who, in all innocence, avoids being fleeced by a sophisticated older woman and actually reverses the situation. Next up are two rather more intense stories the first involving a young man set on an artistic career, the second a boy who resists growing up. The final story, The Colonel's Lady, has arguably the most substance and is ultimately moving. A reasonable percentage of working English actors of the day, both established and emerging, are wheeled out presumably on the scatter-gun theory that at least some of them will appeal to a cross section of film goers. Over all it stands up fairly well as it approaches its sixty-fifth birthday.
Review of Quartet
