El filo de la navaja

Old Hollywood was always in trouble when dealing with Deep Think. That's because of the medium's commercial nature. When flirting with spiritual or religious beliefs, the studios simply didn't want to risk offending potential ticket buyers. So, when dealing with Deep Think (not their many biblical epics which were unabashedly Christian), the studios compromised to the point of absurdity by either flattening out the message or trivializing it. Here it's trivialized. After all, who's against Goodness. As a result, we wait 145-minutes to find out that, yes, Goodness is in fact a good and noble thing, and with that, Larry (Power) is on his way to enlightenment. And naturally, no one's offended, except maybe those who had expected something more.

Of course, the profundity is wrapped in lavishly mounted studio soap opera, with two of Hollywood's most beautiful people surrounded by whirling hosts of well-clothed extras. In fact, that opening ballroom scene is a marvel of orchestrated staging as the characters are introduced by serially playing off one another.

At the spectrum's other end, however, is that dreadful monastery scene with its painted mountain backdrop and facile dialog. Flattening the import of that pivotal scene are the repeated references to god as though that's where all paths must inevitably lead. And that's along with the spectacular alpine vistas fairly shouting celestial light from a heavenly above. I'm sure all that window dressing comforted nervous audiences who could then wink at Larry's spiritual quest and not feel the least bit threatened. But it also reduced a profound subject to a superficial level.

Another area that gets a Hollywood treatment are values and class, always tricky topics for an industry backed by Wall Street. The movie goes to pains circulating Larry among the gilded elite of Chicago as epitomized by the petulantly snobbish Templeton (Webb) and the selfishly insulated Isabel (Tierney). But, the elite's values are clearly materialistic, a spiritual dead-end in Larry's view as he heads off to learn from suffering with the working class. The screenplay thus sets up an implicit critique of the gilded class and the values that guide them. Well and good. But then the screenwriters can't seem to decide what to do with this point of view; after all, that's another touchy topic among audiences, especially coming so soon after the societal upheaval of the 1930's.

As a result, Larry never really criticizes the peer group he's been a part of, never really explains, that is, why he sees his social class as a spiritual dead-end, which of course would delve into a socially touchy subject. Nor, for that matter, does Larry explain why "salvation" lies through sharing a working class experience. We're left, I guess, to suppose the answer has to do with the suffering caused by hard physical labor and poor pay this class must endure. This subtext, however, is never really brought to the surface and remains unresolved at movie's end. Thus, big studio TCF and its head honcho, producer Zanuck, nibble around a second tinderbox topic, tantalizing us but never really delivering.

The movie does have a definite upside. For one, it's exquisitely well photographed, compensating somewhat for the 2-hour-plus run time. At the same time, the ballroom scenes are especially well choreographed and lavishly upholstered, creating an impressive air of wealth and breeding that makes Larry's renunciation a genuine material sacrifice. Then too, there's Webb's lively version of an unregenerate snob, a character he could do to waspish perfection. Also, Marshall's quietly observant author provides a needed contemplative note. However, in the film's pivotal role Power fails to provide the needed depth his character requires, or as another reviewer observes, Larry is pretty much the same after his trip to India as he was before. Fortunately, Power would later find that depth in Nightmare Alley (1947).

All in all, the movie remains an overlong visual treat that fortunately includes the exquisite Tierney. But as one might expect from old Hollywood, the film fails crucially at coming to grips with its two overriding themes—spirituality and class. As a result, two of life's most important questions are given unchallenging treatment. In short, here as elsewhere, where Deep Think is concerned, commercialism precedes all else.

Darryl Zanuck gave in to Tyrone Power's request for some serious acting roles and not another costume part in his first post World War II film after returning from the Marines. The Razor's Edge is a bit overlong, but Tyrone Power and the rest of the cast is shown to best advantage.

The Razor's Edge is the story about a returning World War I veteran's quest for spiritual meaning in his life. Author W. Somerset Maugham wrote this during the 30s and his themes then found a good audience in 1946. He appears in the movie, played by Herbert Marshall, and it is his eyes through which we see the action unfold.

It starts at a party in the Midwest at the beginning of the Roaring 20s. All the principal characters are introduced there including Larry Darrell, played by Power, who wants to postpone his engagement to Gene Tierney. Power explains about his lack of spiritual fulfillment and his desire to do some global soul searching. Tierney's not happy, but she thinks all he wants to do is sow some wild oats and she reluctantly acquiesces.

A year later she's in Paris and she finds Ty living on the fringe and she realizes he was serious. Now Tierney is hopping mad so she marries steady and reliable John Payne. Now the plot unfolds.

As I've said in other reviews of his films Power was either the straight arrow hero or a hero/heel type. He's a straight arrow in this one as noble as you can get without crossing over into Dudley DooRightism.

Gene Tierney had essayed bitchiness in Leave Her to Heaven and she refines it to a high art here. Even though she's married to Payne, she still has a yen for Ty and her machinations are what drives the rest of the story.

John Payne, I have always been convinced was brought to 20th Century Fox as a singing Tyrone Power for musicals. So it is interesting to see them together. It is unfortunate that Payne wasn't given a better role because his part as Tierney's husband who loses his fortune in the Stock Market Crash wasn't better written. Payne proved on a lot of occasions he was a capable enough actor to handle more complex parts.

Clifton Webb plays fussy Uncle Elliott Templeton and got an Oscar Nomination, losing to Harold Russell in the Best Years of Our Lives. Webb was the closest thing for years to an out gay actor and a lot of his roles reflect that part of him, like this one. My favorite scene is after Ty Power goes to India and in that Shangri La like lamasery feels he has been made spiritually aware, with the symphonic crescendos rising, the action cuts away to a Paris tailor shop where Clifton Webb is complaining that the tassel on his robe doesn't sway, but that it bobbles.

Anne Baxter won a Best Supporting Actress Award for a playing a friend of Tierney's in the mid west. Baxter is a happy girl, marrying a young man she's deeply in love with. Her husband and baby are killed in an automobile crash. Baxter's study of physical and moral decline and degradation is some of her best work, maybe even better than Eve Harrington in All About Eve.

The story is a bit dated now, but it's still a fine film and one that shows Tyrone Power capable of far more than swashbuckling.

I discovered this movie only recently and have watched it three times in the last two months. It's the kind of movie that rewards repeated viewings. The story, as others have commented, is moving and inspiring and way ahead of its time, dealing as it does with topics (the philosophical/spiritual quest for meaning in life, alcoholism, psychic healing, class divisions, post-war trauma, greed vs. self sacrifice) that one would expect in a movie taking place in the nineteen sixties rather than one taking place immediately following World War I. It offers the pleasure of Hollywood glamour of a very high order with one spectacular set-piece after another. Over and over, one is amazed at the staging of scenes set at balls, restaurants, night-clubs, Paris streets, factories, etc. Many jaw-dropping, pre-steadycam long takes involve the choreography of dozens of elements, e.g. one long take outside a Paris railway station, or another crane shot in a Paris night club as the camera searches the crowd for the protagonists. Everyone involved with the film seems to be working at his or her peak, from director Goulding to composer Alfred Newman, to all the perfectly cast actors. The screenplay is filled with brilliant cinematic story-telling devices (ironic voice-overs, montage sequences, foreshadowings, symbolism (the use of water and the ocean in so many scenes)that keep a long and complex story moving so smoothly that the two-hour-plus running time is hardly noticed at all. The cinematography by someone named Arthur Miller is gorgeous with lighting effects and moving camerawork that rank in the pantheon of Hollywood's visual creations. This is a great film.

The Razor's Edge (1946)

A stately, dramatic, richly nuanced film about love, true love, and the love of life. It's about what matters, and what doesn't, in a high society world George Cukor could have filmed, but this is by director Edmund Goulding, coming off of a series of war films, and with the great Grand Hotel from 1932 in his trail. Some people will find this a touch stiff or slow, or rather too nuanced, but I think none of the above at all. It has the richness of the Somerset Maugham novel it is based on, and Goulding had just filmed (the same year) Of Human Bondage, another Maugham novel. In both cases, the writer contributed to the screenplay, and the combination of the two of them seems really perfect.

Tyrone Power is an interesting lead man, as the idealistic and handsome Larry Darrell, and in some ways his restraint and almost studied dullness at times is maybe what the film needs for its rich, calm trajectory through the twenty years it covers. He's as stable and "good" as the wise, knowing figure of the author, who appears in the form of actor Herbert Marshall. Gene Tierney as Power's counterpart and eventually counterpoint plays the spoiled woman with cool, dramatic perfection. She's got energy and edge and beauty from every angle, and she maintains just that slightest duplicity in every scene, so you are kept on your toes.

The only forced and almost laughable section is the one that demands we think profound thoughts...the guru in India being guru to our hero. Unfortunately, it lasts for fifteen minutes, and though there is a spiritual necessity to the experience he has there, this spiritual aspect is implied just as fully in the worldly scenes that follow. I can picture a far better movie without this insert, and I can picture the director picturing it, too. Someone knows why it got patched in, and for whom, but this is what we have.

It has to be said the filming, as conservative as it is in many ways, is spot-on gorgeous. The brightly lit, ornamented, busy sets are actually inhabited by the camera, and the figures move together not only across the field, but front to back as well, in triangles and curves of visual activity, yet with fluidity--it's all contained and lyrically delicious. This is done without ostentatious mood, without sharp angles and bold lighting, but instead with spatial arrangements, always full, no emptiness, no great shadows, always something more to see. A great example, easy to find, is the very last scene, just before the shot on the boat when the end titles run. Watch how Marshall walks the long way around Tierney, and then she walks around him, and the camera keeps them framed side to side, front to back. It's nothing short of brilliant, and yet, in style, so different than say Toland doing Kane or, at another extreme, Ozu doing Tokyo Story. But no less spectacular.

At one point, a minor character, a defrocked priest, says to Darrell in a working class bar, "You sound like a very religious man who does not believe in God." The movie is really about godliness, or what Maugham calls "goodness" in the end. And some people have it, and share it, and make the world better, God or no God.

Producer Darryl F. Zanuck fashioned a major production for Tyrone Power upon his return to 20th Century Fox after a stint in the military service. No expense was spared in terms of production values, and special care was taken to cast each role to "perfection."

With master story teller W. Somerset Maugham joining in writing the screenplay from his sprawling, multi-character novel, and Edmund Gouling doing the direction and Alfred Newman the score, it was a setup that couldn't miss.

The cast works at a thoroughly respectable level, and the film emerges likewise. Yet, it falls strangely short of the genuine masterpiece Zanuck obviously planned.

There is a rather cold center to "The Razor's Edge," which prevents one from being able to completely empathize with and feel for these characters and their respective plight. While they are interesting, the characters fail to ignite a deep emotional response in the viewer. One ends more observing this enactment, which has the feel of a somewhat slick presentation.

It also represents the best of what 20th Century Fox had to offer in the mid-forties. Power next went on to do "Nightmare Alley," for which he received some of the best notices of his lengthy film career.