Trio has two directors --Ken Annakin and Harold French -- of its three segments but unlike Quartet (see my post of June 7, 2016) the three parts of this anthology film stay close to Maugham's stories, as Maugham himself was one of the screenwriters, along with R.C. Sherriff, best known for his screenplays for director James Whale.
The first two segments are as short and simple, genteel and elegant as the stories themselves. Directed by Ken Annakin The Verger (English term for church attendant) is about a man (played quietly and intently by James Hayten) who is given the sack by the new vicar because he can neither read nor write and is not interested in learning to do so. One of the churchwardens says, "It is the most amazing thing I ever heard," cried the general. Do you mean to say that you've been verger of this church for sixteen years and never learned to read or write?" Hayten accepts his fate, becoming wealthy by investing the money has saved in a string of tobacco shops, after walking home without finding a place to buy cigarettes.
Annakin also directed the second segment Mr. Know-All. Nigel Patrick plays an obnoxious and overly friendly jewel expert on a ship from San Francisco to Yokohama; his cabinmate says "I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada [Patrick] even before I knew him." While having dinner with a diplomat (Naunton Wayne) and his wife (Anne Crawford), who have been away from each other for two years, he offers to look at Crawford's necklace after Wayne says it cost $18. As Patrick looks at the necklace he sees a stricken look on Crawford's face and immediately says the pearls are fake. When Patrick returns to his cabin there is a thank-you note there from Crawford.
The third episode is Sanatorium, directed by Harold French. There are people who say that suffering ennobles. It is not true. As a general rule it makes men petty, querulous and selfish; but here in the sanatorium there is not much suffering, writes Maugham. Sanatorium is something of a soap opera and something of a comedy. It takes place in a consumption sanatorium in Scotland, where some of the residents can't wait to get out and others would just as soon stay indefinitely or until they die. There's lots of squabbling over who gets which room, who will be someone's bridge partner, and who is cheating at chess. Visitors come and go but most of the residents are alone, forgotten or abandoned by their families. One couple, played by Michael Rennie and Jean Simmons, want to get married, even though the doctor suggests that this would cause possible death. They go ahead anyway, with a dying patient reconciling with his wife at the wedding.
Maugham himself introduces each segment with his slight stammer, suggesting that Sanatorium is autobiographical; one of the characters, a prodigious reader, is named Asheden, the name of Maugham's 1927 autobiographical spy novel. Maugham was a successful playwright before writing novels and each segment in Trio is rather like a short play.
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