calvinnme
... and they did get ambitious here - an attempt to fit a very sprawling saga about one man's spiritual quest in an age of materialism into an almost three hour movie without boring the viewer. It works wonderfully.Larry Darryl (Tyrone Power) comes back from WWI to Chicago and to his fiancée, Isabel (Gene Tierney), who is madly in love with him, but not with his new focus on life. At the last minute on the last day of the war another man died saving his life, and it has gotten Larry thinking about the meaning of life. He just doesn't want to use his social connections, get a good position, and make money. He needs time to reflect to make the life that he has been given at another man's expense mean something. However, for all the time the movie takes and the opportunities that Larry surrenders, in the end, after mulling it over, you go "Wait a minute ! What exactly was that about, anyway? Maybe it wasn't as profound as I thought it was while I was watching it !"It's the only reason I give it 9 instead of 10 stars.What makes it work is that Larry's story is not the entire story. There are a host of interesting characters. Isabel is shamelessly material and in spite of how clever she thinks she is, she is very transparent. John Payne plays Gray, the guy Isabel eventually marries, and if he isn't clueless to her true nature, he does a great job hiding it. Clifton Webb plays Isabel's uncle and does what he always did so well at Fox - play someone who says exactly what he thinks regardless of the consequences.Then there is Ann Baxter as the tragic Sophie, a woman who is very much in love with her life and her husband and baby daughter until a crash with a drunk driver destroys all of that. Then comes the crash of 1929 and destroys some of the other characters in different ways. Herbert Marshall plays Maugham himself, and is likable as always, basically an observer in this story.Best scenes - Gene Tierney descends a staircase with the grace of an angel and delivers herself to the equally beautiful Tyrone Power; Power talks to a defrocked priest who is a wanted man and says he does not fear punishment he fears mercy; Power and Tierney have a final face off. Tierney finally says what has been written all over her face for the entire film, Power proves that he sees right through her; Power talks a good hearted personal secretary (Elsa Lancester) out of an invitation to a ball for a dying man who cannot attend but who wants the right to refuse more than anything in the little life he has left.Well acted by Fox's brightest stars, well directed, and beautifully photographed and scored, I'd highly recommend it. The time will fly by.
utgard14
Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) returns home from World War I not sure what to do with his life, except that he doesn't want to work and marry just yet. He breaks off his engagement with his socialite fiancée Isabel (Gene Tierney) and travels the world seeking some answers to life's questions. While in India, he achieves some degree of enlightenment and also discovers a way to cure headaches! When he returns, Isabel has married another man (John Payne). Also his childhood friend Sophie (Anne Baxter) has lost her husband and child in an accident and has become a drunk living in a seedy part of town. Larry sets out to help Sophie but jealous Isabel doesn't take kindly to this.Thoughtful adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham story. Maugham appears as a character in the film, wonderfully played by Herbert Marshall. Power and Tierney offer solid performances. But the real stars are the supporting duo of Anne Baxter and Clifton Webb. Baxter won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Webb was nominated but did not win against stiff competition. He's fantastic though. Baxter gives possibly the best performance of her career. Despite the length, I never felt bored. It's an excellent movie. A little pretentious perhaps but much less so than many similarly-themed dramas made in the last few decades. The 1984 remake doesn't hold a candle to this, by the way.
stewart0602-907-947570
One of the great classic story and character-driven films of the Golden Age that combines the casting of stars with exceptional acting and writing, and results in moving tragedy that's near-Shakespearean as well as sublimely entertaining. It still packs a wallop after almost 70 years, which is what "classic" really should mean (not merely old). The combination of Power's searing good looks, magnificent voice and emotional distance are near-perfection. Ann Baxter is equally wonderful; if I'm not mistaken, she won an Oscar for this portrayal. Darryl Zanuck was a visionary in his day, the anti-MGM. Love this movie.
secondtake
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.
