Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 9-March-08
Spoiler Rating: High

The Razor's Edge (1946)

I will say up front that "The Razor's Edge" is too long and occasionally too melodramatic. It gets my vote, however, because few other films pit self-enlightenment against the shallowest American values. On one side of the conflict is Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power). A veteran of World War I, Larry moves with a gay crowd of bankers and lawyers or future bankers and lawyers and their pampered wives and girlfriends. But a near-death experience involving a fellow soldier's sacrifice has left him hungry to discover the reason for his existence. He considers the path before him and finds it lacking. So he heads to Paris to live among artists and everyday folk and to glean sustenance for his soul. After a couple years he travels to India to study with a swami and go on a vision quest of sorts. He finally returns, first to Europe and then to the U.S., with an inner calm and understanding that he must follow his heart instead of societal expectations. This is not to say that he is selfish or a hedonist; the core of his wisdom is the realization that his own fulfillment entails a compassion towards others. The novelty of this theory excuses the film's unfortunate use of meteorological phenomena, i.e., thunder when a defrocked priest speaks of God and sunbeams when Larry finds the Meaning of Life on a mountaintop.

On the other side of the conflict is Larry's one-time fiancée Isabel (Gene Tierney). She loves Larry but cannot comprehend or respect his needs. She is accustomed to the finer things in life and considers it both repellent and disgraceful to deprive herself of them. What would people who matter say if she failed to wear emeralds and host lavish parties with a presentable husband? How could she explain such heresy to her preening, supercilious uncle (Clifton Webb) who becomes her benefactor after the stock market crash? Uncle Elliott is the kind of person who states, "I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi," and although she is more tactful Isabel sympathizes with his class-conscious pride.

Isabel carries on during Larry's quest, amassing the requisite husband and children and jewels, catching up with him every so often and always being drawn to him. In the midst of their friction, invisibly and then explosively, stands a mutual friend named Sophie. Anne Baxter won an Academy Award in this role, and it does boast the attention-grabbing features of tragic suffering, drug addiction, and moral decay. Sophie adheres to a different set of American values than the ones Isabel worships and Larry refutes, values that involve the simple pleasures of the middle-class home. When these are violently denied to her, she rides despondency into the pit of Hell and provides the final battleground for Larry and Isabel's struggle. (Sophie's import is grim. Her downfall suggests that the average person is easily lost when catastrophe strikes, having neither advanced spiritual awareness nor loads of money to fall back on.)

You have to hand it to all the actors, who approach their slightly exaggerated stances with conviction. Their message is clear from the first, when Larry is hailed as an exceptional man by the narrator (Herbert Marshall, playing the real-life author of the tale, W. Somerset Maugham). Larry is the hero because he does not get the girl. He does not even want her when her principles are so askew.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.