The Razor’s Edge (1946)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) Despite its sharp title, The Razor’s Edge is not a thriller, not a film noir, not a crime movie—it’s a soul-searching literary drama adapted from Somerset Maugham’s novel and whose contemporary impact may not be immediately understandable by twenty-first century audiences. What a bit of historical investigation reminds us is that the story was written during WW2 and, upon release in 1944, gradually found a public receptive to its themes of aimlessness after a great trauma, then-unusual transcendental themes and resistance to the increasing materiality of American culture. Even elements such as casting Tyrone Power (then more akin to a matinee idol) were playing into that zeitgeist. (Gene Tierney looks nice, though.) Those may not be readily apparent many decades later, but they certainly feed the film’s thematic concerns. Whether the result is successful is up for debate—one of the dangers in adapting a novel heavy in unconventional themes is the double-flattening effects of material being handled by people who didn’t come up with it, and tailored to an audience even further removed from what the original work was trying to say. Then there’s the real danger of ending up with a dull clunker incapable of properly conveying the point—and at 145 minutes, The Razor’s Edge is clearly vulnerable to that statement. All of this to say—sit down and prepare yourself for a long sit because this isn’t some genre piece with regular action beats to keep you awake.