Four of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories are brought to the screen with each introduced by the author. In the first story, "The Facts of Life", a young man with great potential on the tennis courts goes to Monte Carlo and soon finds himself doing the exact opposite of what his father recommended. In "The Alien Corn", an aspiring pianist devotes himself to perfecting his artistic skills, but finds he likely hasn't the talents to reach the heights he so desperately craves. In "The Kite", a young man, who lives at home and loves kite flying, goes against his overbearing mother's wishes and marries the girl he's been dating. He's soon back home, much to his mother's delight, but re-considers when his wife takes up a new hobby. In the final chapter "The Colonel's Lady", a middle-aged man is shocked to learn that his somewhat dowdy wife has written a collection of racy poems and is now a best-selling author. Written by garykmcd
If you wonder why the story "The Alien Corn" has that title, the answer tells you what has been left out, and why it is therefore so bland and restrained as to be superficial and uninteresting. Maugham gave it that title because it was about Jews. The boy's father is not some terribly, terribly dash-it-all, upper-upper English aristocrat. He is a self-made man who has devoted his life to fitting into English society. But, Maugham says, in a line no one who has read this story will ever forget, he betrayed himself with one characteristic which marked him out as entirely un-English: "He loved his son." It is this tension between the man's deep, sensual love of his son and the man's desire to fit in with the English upper class, who do not become artists, or didn't then (sort of thing foreigners and nancy boys do), that gives the story its power and pain, not simply the young man's desire to be an artist conflicting with his lack of talent. And it is a disgrace that, even after World War II, the filmmakers clearly thought that the problem of Jewish assimilation could not be part of a "civilised," classy, English entertainment.