Pauline Kael Quote

The happiest screen collaboration of Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton — they're both wonderful — is in this adaptation of a Somerset Maugham story, "The Vessel of Wrath." It's set on an island in the Pacific, which Maugham calls Baru, and it's concerned with the efforts of the prim missionary (Lanchester) to reform the carnal, ribald beachcomber (Laughton). The situation is the reverse of that in Maugham's Sadie Thompson story, but with a light, comic tone. The Hepburn-Bogart "African Queen" probably took a few notions from it.

"The Beachcomber," p. 56. - 5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)