The Razor's Edge

Although widely considered a classic, this condensed adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel of social standing and self-discovery is long on soap-operatics and conspicuously short on the soul-searching that's meant to drive its most pivotal character. Tyrone Power gives a rather dead-eyed performance as a World War I vet who finds it hard to return to his former upper-class trappings, so he sets out to find himself by bumming around Europe, working in a coalmine, and climbing mountains in India. But while director Edmund Goulding shows, for example, Power arriving at a Hindu monastery (followed, a few short scenes later with him bidding farewell, wearing a distant stare and halcyon smile--the 1940s and '50s Hollywood symbol for enlightenment), the film in no way addresses his actual spiritual journey. Meanwhile, the fiancée Power has left behind (Gene Tierney) has married a financially ambitious dullard (John Payne) who goes bust in the 1929 stock market crash and has a nervous breakdown. The inevitable reunion between Power and Tierney isn't nearly as interesting as the distaste it inspires in the latter's disapproving, busybody, aristocratic uncle (a typecast Clifton Webb at his snide and snooty best), who has taken her family in at his deluxe Paris apartment. Herbert Marshall plays Maugham himself, a friend of Webb's and the film's narrator. Sporting an excellent transfer, DVD extras includes an academic commentary track by two film historians and a handful of related newsreels. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)