The Painted Veil

The future looked a little uncertain for Greta Garbo in 1934. Under pressure from the rampant, crackpot Catholic League of Decency whose members were boycotting movie theatres and declaring 'purify or destroy Hollywood', the usually malleable Joseph Breen was obliged to make even stricter the Production Code. 'Mata Hari' was cut and 'Queen Christina' taken out of circulation whilst this adaptation of Somerset Maugham's 'The Painted Veil' needed to tone down its so-called sexual content and instead reflect moral values.

These factors alone cannot entirely explain why this film disappoints. Garbo's scenes with Herbert Marshall are excellent and there is a chemistry between her and George Brent owing to their relationship at the time being more than just professional. It just lacks that 'alchemy' by which everything comes together and falls below director Richard Boleslawski's usual high standards.

Garbo need not have worried as David 0. Selznick was soon to come to her aid. Whatever its flaws and despite being the least faithful to Maugham's original it remains, for this viewer at any rate, the most entertaining of the three versions. 'The Seventh Sin' of Ronald Neame and an uncredited Vincente Minnelli is rather lacklustre whilst it is probably kinder to draw a discreet veil over the most recent version directed by someone named John Curran.