The Razor's Edge (Goulding, 1946): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 5.45pm
This film (screening from a 4K restoration) is part of the Gene Tierney season at BFI Southbank.
Chicago Reader review:
The 1946 original, with Tyrone Power as the proto-hippie who resigns his
North Shore upbringing in favor of wandering Europe and India in search
of eternal wisdom; once he’s attained it, he goes back to his
upper-class friends and straightens out their hopelessly muddled lives.
Somerset Maugham’s novel is basically a revenge fantasy for
intellectuals, with a heavy streak of misogyny focused on the figure of
the hero’s grasping, jealous, and eventually murderous fiancee, elements
that come through just as unpleasantly here as in Bill Murray’s 1984
remake. But director Edmund Goulding is able to check the more
embarrassing excesses of the material, turning philosophical hokum into
acceptable melodrama. Still, it’s Gene Tierney’s incarnation of the
spurned fiancee that brings the picture to life; her transformation from
wounded innocent to cold-blooded harpy is subtle, terrifying, and
weirdly erotic.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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