The Razor's Edge
by Edmund Goulding
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Actor: Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Tyrone PowerDirector: Edmund Goulding
Brand: TCFHE
Cinematographer: Arthur C. Miller
Editor: J. Watson Webb Jr.
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Writer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Writer: Lamar Trotti
Writer: W. Somerset Maugham
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 145 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of The Razor's Edge
DVD Review: Before PTSD
Summary: 5 Stars
I am "hooked" on Bill Murray's "The Razor's Edge" and have recommended it to both PTSD sufferers and to family members for a different type of insight than "The Deer Hunter" and other PTSD movies. In this version the book is followed much more closely and a slightly different slant is given to the character "Larry" but the amazing thing is the way that the PTSD that Larry suffers shows through. I have recently purchased both versions for a friend of mine in the medical field who will be stationed in Afgan soon - hoping they watch both (along with some of Paul Fussell's books) prior to being in country and having to deal with the very problems projected by "Larry" in both versions of this outstanding novel adaptation.DVD Review: more than a masterpiece, it's life
Summary: 5 Stars
very profound message, gene tierny was very underated actress. in this movie, she as always, brings her character to full plate.tyrone power too, underated.this movie will give you a very positive outlook on life,dignity and respect for the human spirit.DVD Review: razers edge
Summary: 5 Stars
it's a wonderful movie.Plus the sevice I got from amazon was just as
wonderful.I got my dvd quickly and without a lot of hassel.Thanks
amazon.co.
kevin dee vicory
DVD Review: Darryl F. Zanuck wrestles with enlightened goodness in Somerset Maugham's novel. Zanuck wins
Summary: 2 Stars
What if Somerset Maugham had written a novel about a coal miner who decided to search for transcendental enlightenment by trying to join a country club? If he had, he could have called it The Razor's Edge, since the Katha-Upanishad tells us, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." But Maugham decided to stick with the well-bred class, and so we have Darryl F. Zanuck's version of Larry Darrell, recently returned from WWI, carefully groomed, well connected in society and determined to find himself by becoming a coal miner.
Or, as Maugham tells us, "This is the young man of whom I write. He is not famous. It may be that when at last his life 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 men, so that, long after his death, perhaps, it will be realized that lived in this age a very remarkable creature."
The Razor's Edge has all of Zanuck's cultural taste that money could buy. It's so earnest, so sincere...so self-important. As Larry goes about his search for wisdom, working in mines, on merchant ships, climbing a Himalayan mountain to learn from an ancient wise man, we have his selfish girl friend, Isabel, played by Gene Tierney, his tragic childhood chum played by Anne Baxter, the girlfriend's snobbish and impeccably clad uncle played by Clifton Webb, and Willie Maugham himself, played by Herbert Marshall, taking notes. The movie is so insufferably smug about goodness that the only thing that perks it up a bit is Clifton Webb as Elliot Templeton. "If I live to be a hundred I shall never understand how any young man can come to Paris without evening clothes." Webb has some good lines, but we wind up appreciating Clifton Webb, not Elliot Templeton.
Zanuck wanted a prestige hit for Twentieth Century when he bought the rights to Maugham's novel. He waited a year until Tyrone Power was released from military service. He made sure there were well-dressed extras by the dozens, a score that sounds as if it were meant for a cathedral and he even wrote some of the scenes himself. The effort is as self-conscious as a fat man wearing a rented tux. Despite Hollywood's view of things in The Razor's Edge, I can tell you that for most people hard work doesn't bring enlightenment, just weariness and low pay.
After nearly two-and-a-half hours, we last see Larry carrying his duffle bag on board a tramp steamer in a gale. He's going to work his way back to America from Europe with a contented smile on his face. "My dear," Somerset Maugham says to Isabel at the same time in an elaborately decorated parlor, "Larry has found what we all want and what very few of us ever get. I don't think anyone can fail to be better, and nobler, kinder for knowing him. You see, my dear, goodness is after all the greatest force in the world...and he's got it!" Larry and the audience both need a healthy dose of Dramamine.
Maugham, lest we forget, was a fine writer of plays, novels, essays and short stories. To see how the movies could do him justice, watch the way some of his short stories were brought to the screen in Encore - 3 Stories by W. Somerset Maugham [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ], W. Somerset Maugham Trio and Quartet - 4 Stories by W. Somerset Maugham (The Facts of Life,The Kite,The Colonel's Lady, The Alien Corn) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ]. And instead of wasting time with Larry Darrell, spend some time with Lawrence Durrell. The Alexandria Quartet is a good read.
DVD Review: Searching for one's soul
Summary: 5 Stars
What do you want from life? What does it all mean in the end? Why should one man die & another man live? Is it all just arbitrary?
Here's a sumptuous adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel about one man's search for answers to those questions. It's done in grand Hollywood style, with a fine cast, beautiful sets, and sharp dialogue. Granted, it takes some minor liberties with the source material, and the acting style isn't as naturalistic as modern viewers might expect. But I think those are quibbles, and don't interfere with the movie as a whole.
Tyrone Power has the most difficult part, in that he has to play the seeker Larry Darrell according to the stylized conventions of screen piety at the time. Even so, his slightly stiff & detached performance does convey the sense of someone not quite in synch with the everyday world, someone who's still looking for something solid & real. He never comes across as a prig or stuffed shirt -- rather than seeming above everyone else, he seems apart from everyone else. He's naive in some ways, but he's not stupid. And his empathy for & acceptance of his friends, just as they are, is obvious.
The rest of the cast is quite good as well. Gene Tierney's Isabel is stunningly beautiful, with just the right balance of coolness & yearning ... and as we see later, capable of vindictive cruelty. John Payne's millionaire could easily have been a stock villain, the Crass Rich Man, but instead he's simply a decent human being whose temperament lends itself to the business world. Anne Baxter may be a little bit over the top, but her character has earned that right. Certainly her self-destructiveness is all too familiar to many of us.
And then we come to the standout performances, to my mind: Clifton Webb's wonderfully waspish snob, Uncle Eliot, and Herbert Marshall's depiction of Somerset Maugham himself. Webb manages to make a vain, essentially shallow man somehow as endearing as he is annoying, while Marshall makes the presence of the author within his own story (as in the novel) totally convincing.
Again, modern audiences used to location shooting might wince at the studio sets of India, or the white actor playing an Indian spiritual teacher. Well, this was the custom at the time, and allowances should be made for it. And the guru of no fixed ethnic background works on an archetypal level: the Wise Old Man. Taken as a symbol, rather than as an individual, he's quite acceptable, not unlike Sam Jaffe's elderly monk in "Lost Horizon."
It's also fascinating to see how much adult material they managed to include, despite the restrictions of the Hays Code. Without being explicit, they make clear Isabel's intention to trap Larry by getting pregnant. And in Maugham's encounter with a worldly French police officer, the novelist's homosexuality is discreetly & sympathetically referenced. The grown-ups in the audience would understand it all immediately, while such material would simply go over the heads of any children.
Some may prefer Bill Murray's remake, which is certainly more authentic in its Indian scenes. But overall, it's not as strong as the original, and Bill hasn't quite found the balance of comedy & drama that worked so perfectly in "Groundhog Day." Sometimes a bit of artifice just winds up working better than authenticity.
For those who wonder if there's more to life than money & status, this is an indispensible film. Most highly recommended!
Description of The Razor's Edge
Narrated by on-screen observer Maugham (Herbert Marshall), this intriguing tale centers on a soul-searching World War I veteran (Tyrone Power) who finds he can not settle back into the world of the upper class. Shunning his planned marriage and career, he travels abroad to seek the meaning of life and career, he travels abroad to seek the meaning of life and causes his distraght fiancee (GeneTierney) to seek solace with another man (John Payne).The Somerset Maugham novel should be read by everybody at a certain age (say, early twenties), and this 1946 movie adaptation of The Razor's Edge stays faithful to the book's questing spirit. Despite its apparently uncommercial storyline, it was a pet project of Fox honcho Darryl F. Zanuck, who saw the spiritual journey of Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) as an "adventure" movie. Power, who was newly returned to Hollywood after his military service in World War I, does his most soul-searching work as the WWI vet who needs to find something in life deeper than money and conformity. The search takes him away from fiancee Gene Tierney and her skeptical uncle Clifton Webb and into Parisian streets and Himalayan mountain ranges. Herbert Marshall deftly plays the role of "Somerset Maugham," the observing author, and Anne Baxter picked up the supporting actress Oscar for her brassy turn as a floozy. The picture has the careful, glossy look of the studio system's peak years (you can sense Zanuck "classing it up" and squeezing the life out of it), and Edmund Goulding's tasteful approach is hardly the way to dig deep into the soul of man. If it seems a little staid today, its square sincerity nevertheless holds up well--and it just looks so fabulous. The really amazing thing about the movie is that it was made at all. A 1984 remake, with Bill Murray, is an extremely weird variation on the material. --Robert Horton
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