THE RAZOR'S EDGE Movie Review
1946 Edmund Goulding
“This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end, he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on this earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. Yet it may be that the way of life he has chosen for himself may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow man so that long after his death, perhaps, it will be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.”
So Somerset Maugham (Herbert Marshall) introduces Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) and sets the tone for an unusually faithful adaptation. When a fiction writer becomes a character, perhaps filmmakers feel an extra sense of responsibility to the source material, but director Edmund Goulding and writer Lamar Trotti also understand exactly what the real Maugham is up to. From the opening moments, they involve the audience with the characters and then let those characters do the rest. In other hands, the plot might float away in a cloud of soap bubbles. With another cast, the whole thing might have foundered under the weight of all the dialogue. But this time that elusive screen “chemistry” works to perfection.
The story begins in the summer of 1919 in Chicago. Maugham is passing through and accepts an invitation from his old but not close friend Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb) to attend a country club dinner party. There he meets Larry and his fiancee Isabel (Gene Tierney), Elliott's niece. He also meets their friend Sophie MacDonald (Anne Baxter), who will be more important later, and Gray Maturin (John Payne) who is also in love with Isabel. Times are good; everyone is making lots of money and the prospects for an intelligent young man like Larry seem limitless. But he wants something more. The war changed him in ways he does not understand.
He tells Isabel that on the last day of the war, the last moments, actually, his life was saved by another man who deliberately sacrificed himself. Larry can't get over the experience. “So, he's gone and I'm alive. Why? It's all so meaningless. You can't help but ask yourself what it's all about. Whether there's any sense to it or whether it's just a stupid blunder.”
The marriage is delayed while he goes off in search of answers to those big questions. The routine is the stuff of cliches now—tramp steamer, boho Paris, enlightenment in India—but both the novel and the film were instrumental in the creation of those cliches, and neither loses sight of the characters. Though the romantic entanglements are important, the three male leads really have the best moments. Webb is completely within his element as the pompous, snobbish Elliott, who balances the dapper Maugham and the more passionate Larry.
The film's criticism of a particular kind of American narrow-mindedness is as fresh as it ever was. Maugham's observations about the desire among some veterans to use the transformations that they'd experienced in the war to a more productive end are accurate, and they certainly touched a chord in 1946 audiences. The film was one of the most popular of the year and was nominated for several Academy Awards. (Anne Baxter won for Best Supporting Actress.)
The post-war idealism that Maugham addressed would fade quickly in the face of the emerging economic boom, the famous “organization man” and “good life” of the 1950s. Even so, The Razor's Edge remains one of the most enjoyable films of its time, and the 1984 Bill Murray remake is actually much better than its reputation.
Cast: Tyrone Power (Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (Isabel), Anne Baxter (Sophie MacDonald), Clifton Webb (Elliot Templeton), Herbert Marshall (Somerset Maugham), John Payne (Gary Maturin), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Keith), Lucile Watson (Louisa Bradley), Frank Latimore (Bob MacDonald), Cecil Humphreys (Holy Man), Harry Pilcer (Specialty dancer), Cobina Wright Sr. (Princess Novemali), Noel Cravat (Russian singer), John Wengraf (Joseph); Written by: Lamar Trotti; Cinematography by: Arthur C. Miller; Music by: Alfred Newman. Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century-Fox. Awards: Academy Awards '46: Best Supporting Actress (Baxter); Golden Globe Awards '47: Best Supporting Actor (Webb), Best Supporting Actress (Baxter); Nominations: Academy Awards '46: Best Interior Decoration, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Webb). Running Time: 146 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption.