Le fil du rasoir

To repeat, this film has everything going for it: top-notch cast, direction, no expense spared in production. It achieved an enthusiastic audience response when it came out. Why does it leave me dissatisfied?

First, it is hard to adapt a complex novel for the stage or screen. It's not impossible. Great authors, Charles Dickens for one, adapted their work for the stage. Some Dickens novels, "Great Expectations" and "Oliver Twist," at the very same time this film was being made, reached the screen magnificently in slimmed-down versions. Not this one. Apparently, Somerset Maugham prepared a screenplay. It was not used. Perhaps that was the mistake. The screenplay that was used follows the novel. But it fails to capture the essence.

Larry, the protagonist, is disillusioned with life, a reasonable reaction to WW I. He goes on his quest for spiritual enlightenment, as in the novel. He finds it, more or less. But what is it? We never know. The novel includes a long digression on that point. The movie omits it. We are left with a rather kitschy picture of a pleasant, peaceful fellow, who tells us he is well on the road to Truth, but never gives us a sign or even a signpost, neither in his speech nor in his behavior. Yet his spiritual search is presented as the key to the whole story. He seeks meaning in the quartiers populaires of Paris and in the coal mines of Picardy. Fine. I had a high school friend who disdained bourgeois life and went off to find fulfillment as a dockworker in Milwaukee. He found egotism. He came away with a happy sense of superiority that let him look down on parasitic rich people. Our Larry goes on to see the guru in the Himalayas. What profound wisdom does he imbibe? We are given no clue. He shuts himself up in a mountaintop retreat, after which he has seen It (capital I) - whatever It is. He can now face mankind. It's an old practice, not confined to Indian gymnosophists. St. Anthony and his fellows, the Desert Fathers, isolated themselves. But the aim was not to rejoin the world. It was to transcend it. Abba Macarius (or one of his fellow desert saints - I'm not sure which) was said to be so otherworldly that his disciples had to hold him down lest his body along with his spirit soar to the realm of God. Larry keeps his feet firmly planted. He returns to society. How is he changed? I can't see it. Tyrone Power plays the very same faintly vacuous character he was before. How does he use his great enlightenment? A little hypnotism to relieve John Payne of chronic migraines. He becomes a one-man AA to cure Sophie off the sauce. (Sophie, by the way, is the only skid-row alcoholic I have ever imagined who can be tracked down because she won't settle for anything less than hugely expensive liqueur.) Now I'm not calling for the movie to add a heavy explanation of transcendental spirituality. But since this is the crux of the story, we ought to get something - instead of nothing.

Anne Baxter richly deserved an Oscar. The rest of the cast makes little impression. Tyrone Power I love as an actor. He just didn't get into this character. Clifton Webb, as usual, is supremely supercilious. No one, except maybe Gladys Cooer, did superciliousness better. But that's it. Cecil Humphreys is a perfectly manicured, made-for-Hollywood yogi. They would have done far better with Sam Jaffe as he was in "Lost Horizon," a really mysterious and effective Wise Man. Gene Tierney - I hate to say it because she was marvelous in many roles - does nothing with this role. It demands much more bite. She is presented as materialistic, self-satisfied, a contrast to the ever-searching Larry. She needs to have, a touch at least, of a hard edge. Gene Tierney is sweetness all the way through, even as she commits one of the cruelest acts put on the screen. Who can sympathize with a person who deliberately inveigles a recovering alcoholic into a room, then plants her alone with a bottle of booze and a glass? The movie cries out for Claire Trevor.

Larry goes off to be a dockworker, or something. Everyone left alive resumes life as before. And we leave the movie theater, or our DVD, with ... what? The novel demands better than that.

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.

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.

This film, and the book on which it is based, made strong impressions on me in my youth, but even more so now that I am past middle age. A magnificent cast - Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, John Payne, Herbert Marshall, help to tell the story of a man who walks "in another man's shoes" -- and totally to his own drummer -- after the first world war. In his quest for spirituality and goodness, he is at odds with the materialism and obsession around him. The different layers of "The Razor's Edge" demand attention: Larry's physical desire for Isabel, a woman it turns out he doesn't even know; Isabel's cold-heartedness and desire to possess Larry; and Larry's search for the meaning of life, while the people he loves disintegrate around him from lack of values or hope. These are all seen through the eyes of Somerset Maugham, played by Marshall. Larry's final confrontation scene with Isabel (Tierney) about Sophie (Baxter) is bone-chilling -- Power, who had a tendency to be sometimes stiff and a bit removed from his material, uses that flaw to excellent advantage as Larry Darrell. It's not a showy role, but he's wonderful, and he's reading of poetry in Sophie's room is unforgettable.

Highly recommended.