Encore

After the success of Dead of Night in the mid-1940s, portmanteau pictures enjoyed something of a vogue in British cinema. This is the third film adapted from Somerset Maugham's short stories. It starts brightly enough with 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' (script, TEB Clarke). A typically English variation on The Rake's Progress, this follows an upper-class ne'er-do-well who sponges mercilessly off his brother. 'Winter Cruise' (Arthur MacRae), set on an ocean liner, and 'Gigolo and Gigolette' (Eric Ambler), about a circus performer who loses her nerve, are less convincing, if only because their endings seem so contrived. Maugham introduces the stories himself.