Maugham’s complex upbringing – orphaned at an early age and educated abroad, he studied medicine back in the UK before his success as a novelist and a dramatist initiated a change in career – as well as his homosexuality, at a time when this was illegal in most ‘civilised’ countries, may have helped give him a special feeling for depicting outsiders. The Letter is a good examples of this – one of his many stories set overseas during Great Britain’s colonial era, its presentation of conventional people overcome by passions they can’t properly articulate in faraway places, provides a fascinating if oblique reflection on the British character and the petty jealousies and hypocrisies that can drive people, no matter where they live.
“He tried to rape me and I shot him” – 1927 stage version
The 1940 film version (one of many – see below) offers a great part for Davis (despite a pretty dodgy British accent) as she sheds her layers of propriety slowly but surely, haunted by her passionate act of murder illuminated by moonlight. Director William Wyler apparently shot the memorable opening dozens of times, though ultimately the studio opted for the first take. Either way, it is highly dramatic and atmospheric as Tony Gaudio’s camera prowls the plantation (well, the studios at Burbank) before the gun starts to go off. The British community rallies round Leslie and her husband, the nice but dull as latex Robert (Herbert Marshall) – but her lawyer Howard Joyce (a great performance by James Stephenson, another good actor that died far too young) starts to suspect that she is not telling the truth. In Columbo-like fashion, he picks up on several inconsistencies. As he says in the original short story:
“If your wife had only shot Hammond once, the whole thing would be absolutely plain sailing. Unfortunately she fired six times.” – 1926 short story