Directed by Ken Annakin, Arthur Crabtree, Harold French, and Ralph Smart • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Mai Zetterling, Hermione Baddeley, Dirk Bogarde

Four directors take on four stories by W. Somerset Maugham—introduced by the author himself—for this superbly crafted and acted anthology film. A promising young tennis player drawn down a profligate path in Monte Carlo; a sensitive pianist (played by Dirk Bogarde) grappling with frustrated ambition; a young man more enchanted by kites than romance; and a colonel shocked to discover his wife’s secret career as an erotic poet are among the dreamers, eccentrics, and tragicomic figures populating these bittersweet tales of human folly.