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The Razor’s Edge Movie Review

The Razor’s Edge is a 1946 drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb. It is a very flawed, but interesting epic.

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“You sound like a very religious man who does not believe in God!“

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An adventuresome young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married. This movie was based on an epic novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It was a huge hit and it received four Oscar nominations, but it did not age well and is now considered to be quite uneven.

This is the type of epic movie that once again tried to mirror ‘Gone with the Wind’ in its richly drawn characters and numerous storylines, but it failed to compete because its execution was messy and its ideas executed in a slapdash manner. The very idea of a gap year in a sense was interesting to witness back in the forties and the exploration of a young man’s existentialist exploration of what is and/or should be important to pursue in life was fascinating.

I loved that main idea behind this movie, but my issue with it is that it failed to properly explore these important themes. The introduction of Eastern philosophies did lead to some interesting conversations, but overall it was rushed and messy. The whole movie failed to properly execute its plot that was too ambitious for its own sake and a lack of a strong center hurt it in the long run.

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Yes, Larry is not your most compelling cinema hero. In fact, he was so dull in comparison to the other personalities on this cast that it was difficult to root for him. The movie would go out of its way to paint him as this amazing human being, but this was only said and never shown on screen. There is also the problem of Tyrone Power, an actor who simply wasn’t strong enough to carry such a complex role, resulting in a weak performance. He was so badly cast here.

But others fared much better. Anne Baxter won an Academy Award for playing his horrendous love interest, a truly terrible human being with no irredeemable qualities, but she was undeniably effective at being what is essentially a villain of the story. Clifton Webb was also nominated and he was very good too, but I would actually say that Gene Tierney was quite underrated in this role of an endearing alcoholic. It was a different kind of role for her, but she imbued it with a lot of heart.

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The Razor’s Edge was at its best when focusing on arguments between characters as the character development was mostly quite strong. Everybody besides the protagonist was very well fleshed out. My problem is that the movie focused on too huge a cast and way too many different subplots, leading to an overlong epic that failed to engage all the way to the end. The cinematography is terrific, the score is pretty good and the production design is splendid, but the directing from Edmund Goulding was deeply flawed as he failed to ignite the movie with a strong pace and a clear goal. I still liked this movie, but it could have been so much better.