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The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge
	Theatrical release poster by Norman Rockwell
Directed by	Edmund Goulding
Screenplay by	Lamar Trotti; Darryl F. Zanuck (uncredited)
Based on	The Razor's Edge; 1944 novel; by W. Somerset Maugham
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Starring	Tyrone Power; Gene Tierney; John Payne; Herbert Marshall; Anne Baxter; Clifton Webb
Cinematography	Arthur C. Miller
Edited by	J. Watson Webb Jr.
Music by	Alfred Newman; Edmund Goulding (uncredited)
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	November 19, 1946 (Roxy Theatre); December 25, 1946 (United States);
Running time	145 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1.2 million
Box office	$5 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)

The Razor's Edge is a 1946 American drama film based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel of the same name. It stars Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, and Herbert Marshall, with a supporting cast including Lucile Watson, Frank Latimore, and Elsa Lanchester. Marshall plays Somerset Maugham. The film was directed by Edmund Goulding.

The Razor's Edge tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life. The story begins through the eyes of Larry's friends and acquaintances as they witness his personality change after the war. His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune.

The Razor's Edge was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture, with Anne Baxter winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Plot

In 1919, at a Chicago country club, Elliott Templeton, an expatriate who has been living in France, has returned to the United States to visit, among other people, his niece Isabel. Isabel is engaged to marry Larry Darrell, recently returned from service as a pilot during the Great War. Larry, however, has no money and no interest in getting a job with a future to support Isabel properly.

Larry refuses a job offer from the father of his friend Gray Maturin, a millionaire who is also in love with Isabel. Larry instead wants to "loaf" on his inheritance of $3,000 a year. Larry has been traumatized by the death of a comrade who sacrificed himself to save him and is driven to find out what meaning life has. Larry and Isabel agree to postpone their marriage for a year so that he can go to Paris to try to clear his muddled thoughts.

In Paris, Larry immerses himself in the life of a student. After a year, Isabel and her mother come to Paris. Larry asks Isabel to marry him, but she cannot bear to live in poverty and breaks their engagement. Isabel later marries Gray, thus gaining the elite social and family life she craves. Larry's childhood friend Sophie Nelson and her boyfriend Bob MacDonald have a baby named Linda. Larry works in a coal mine in France, where a drunk defrocked priest, Kosti, urges him to travel to India to learn from a mystic. Larry studies at a monastery in the Himalayas under the tutelage of a holy man, experiencing a moment of elightenment on a mountaintop. The holy man urges Larry to go back to his people but to not lose his awareness of the infinite beauty of the world and of God.

In Paris, Isabel and her family are living with Elliott after being financially ruined by the stock market crash of 1929. Elliott "sold short" before the crash and "made a killing" in the market. Writer W. Somerset Maugham arranges a lunch for Elliott and his household to meet Larry.

Later, while slumming at a disreputable bar in the Rue de Lappe, they encounter Larry's childhood friend Sophie Nelson, now a drunkard and drug user, and her abusive pimp. Isabel and Gray tell Larry that Sophie lost her husband Bob and daughter Alice in a car crash. Isabel says that they had to "drop" Sophie because of her bad behavior. Larry starts seeing Sophie and eventually tells Isabel that they are engaged. Not wanting to lose Larry, Isabel invites them all to lunch the next day at the Ritz.

There, the waiter convinces Elliott that a little Persovka can do no harm, and Isabel asks for some to be sent to the apartment. She wants to give Sophie a wedding dress and arranges to meet her at the apartment the next afternoon. After the fitting, Isabel shows Sophie pictures of her children, which stirs memories of Linda, then leaves to get her daughter. The butler removes the drinks tray; Isabel stares at the bottle of Persovka and leaves. After a while, Sophie, who has not had alcohol since that night in the Rue de Lappe, takes multiple drinks.

Larry scours the bars and dives, following the trail of a woman demanding Persovka, until he tracks Sophie to an opium den. She runs away, screaming, and disappears. A year later, she is murdered in Toulon.

Maugham and Larry later visit Elliott on his deathbed in Nice, where he tells Gray that he will now have enough money to pay his father's debts and rebuild the business. After Elliott's death, Isabel learns that Larry is leaving that night. He plans to work his way back to the United States aboard a tramp steamer. Isabel says that she loves him and knows he feels the same. She admits to deliberately tempting Sophie, claiming that she did it to save Larry and as a test of Sophie's strength. Larry thinks Isabel tempted Sophie just to get her "out of the way." Still, he has the feeling that Sophie is where she wanted to be, with Bob and Linda. Larry then leaves Isabel for the very last time.

Maugham then enters the room. Isabel tells Maugham that she thinks that she's lost Larry and that she still doesn't understand what Larry really wants. Maugham then makes the final and closing statement of the movie. He says:

"My dear, Larry has found what we all want and 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."

In the final scene of the movie, we see Larry with a certain look of contentment on his face, toiling on the deck of a storm-tossed ship, as he hoists cargo in the rain.

Cast

Tyrone Power as Larry Darrell
Gene Tierney as Isabel Bradley
John Payne as Gray Maturin
Anne Baxter as Sophie MacDonald
Clifton Webb as Elliott Templeton
Herbert Marshall as W. Somerset Maugham
Lucile Watson as Louisa Bradley
Frank Latimore as Bob MacDonald
Elsa Lanchester as Miss Keith
Cecil Humphreys as the Holy Man
Fritz Kortner as Kosti
Ted Billings as Miner (uncredited)
Eugene Borden as Sea Captain (uncredited)
Reed Hadley as Party Waiter (voice, uncredited)
Stanislas Bielski as Man at Bar (uncredited)

Production history

20th Century Fox purchased the film rights from Maugham in March 1945 for $50,000 plus 20% of the film's net profits. The contract stipulated that Maugham would receive an additional $50,000 if the film did not start shooting by February 2, 1946. In August 1945, producer Darryl F. Zanuck had the second unit begin shooting in the mountains around Denver, Colorado, which were to portray the Himalayas in the film. The stars had not yet been cast; Larry Darrell was played by a stand-in and was filmed in extreme long shot. Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power to star and delayed casting until Power finished his service in the Marines in January 1946.

Zanuck originally hired George Cukor to direct, but creative differences led to Cukor's removal. Although Maugham wanted his friend (whom he had in mind when he created the character) Gene Tierney for Isabel,^[4] Zanuck chose Maureen O'Hara but told her not to tell anyone. As O'Hara recounted in her autobiography, she shared the secret with Linda Darnell, but Zanuck found out, fired O'Hara, and hired Tierney. Betty Grable and Judy Garland were originally considered for the role of Sophie before Baxter was cast. Maugham wrote an early draft of the screenplay but not one word of his version was used in the final script, and as a result Maugham declined Zanuck's request to write a sequel, and never worked in Hollywood again.^[5]

Release

On November 19, 1946, the film had its New York premiere at the Roxy Theatre in Manhattan. Motion Picture Herald described it as New York's "largest and most star-studded motion picture premiere since the war" with crowds of onlookers causing a traffic-blocking jam on 50th Street and Seventh Avenue. The premiere was screened to a capacity audience of 5,886 featuring "screen, stage and radio stars, UN delegates, New York society, top-flight film executives and out of-fown film critics."^[6]^[7] The opening at Roxy grossed $165,000 in its first week, surpassing the previous Roxy record set by The Cock-Eyed World in 1929 which grossed $160,000.^[8] An extensive advertising campaign had been launched to promote the film's premiere, which Motion Picture Herald dubbed "impressive in scope, even for so blasé a city as New York." Twentieth Century Fox's advertising director Charles Schlaifer helmed the campaign, organizing expansive outdoor billboards, posters on transportation lines, window displays and electric signs — alongside a sweeping newspaper and radio campaign. The publication further noted: "One was continuously conscious of promotion over the airwaves every time the radio was turned on."^[9]

The film was released wide by Twentieth Century Fox on December 25, 1946, in 300 locations across the United States.^[8]^[10]

Reception

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther panned The Razor's Edge, complaining of its inability to explain the protagonist's spiritual awakening, and of "glib but vacuous dialogue" that hamstrung the actors, shortcomings he blamed on the limitations of the underlying Maugham story, which, said Crowther, was "a vague and uncertain encroachment upon a mystical moral realm, more emotional than intellectual."^[6]

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
Academy Awards	Best Motion Picture	20th Century Fox	Nominated	^[11]
	Best Supporting Actor	Clifton Webb	Nominated
	Best Supporting Actress	Anne Baxter	Won
	Best Art Direction – Black-and-White	Art Direction: Richard Day and Nathan Juran; Interior Decoration: Thomas Little and Paul S. Fox	Nominated
Golden Globe Awards	Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture	Clifton Webb	Won	^[12]
Golden Globe Awards	Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture	Anne Baxter	Won	^[12]

References

^ "All Time Domestic Champs", Variety, January 6, 1960, p 34
^ "Top Grossers of 1947", Variety, 7 January 1948 p 63
^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 p 221
^ Tierney and Herskowitz (1978) Wyden Books, Self- Portrait p.177
^ "Sri Ramana Maharshi and Somerset Maugham". davidgodman.org. October 22, 2014. Retrieved August 15, 2017.
^ ^a ^b Crowther, Bosley (November 20, 1946). "'Razor's Edge,' Fox Film Based on Maugham Novel, Opens at Roxy". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2023.
^ "Lights and Stars Launch "Razor's Edge"". Motion Picture Herald. November 23, 1946. p. 12.
^ ^a ^b ""Razor's Edge" To Open in 300 Cities Christmas". Motion Picture Herald. November 30, 1946. p. 98.
^ "Whetting "The Razor"". Motion Picture Herald. November 23, 1946. p. 62.
^ Ramsaye, Terry (November 23, 1946). "The Razor's Edge: Twentieth Century-Fox — Love, tragedy and faith". Motion Picture Herald. p. 18. Now running pre-release at the Roxy, New York, general release set for Christmas Day. Running time, 146 minutes. PCA No. 11,498. Adult audience classification.
^ "The 19th Academy Awards (1947) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2011.
^ "The Razor's Edge". Golden Globe Awards. Retrieved November 11, 2024.