The Razor's Edge (1946)

The Razor's Edge (Edmund Goulding, 1946) "The Razor's Edge" is a favorite book of mine, one I was inspired to read after a disappointing film adaptation, starring Bill Murray, who stood out from an otherwise respectful version like a howling sore thumb.  But, it had been filmed before, in 1946, under the tutelage of producer Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by Edmund Goulding, only two years after the novel's first publication.

W. Somerset Maugham's book documents (in absentia) the travels of Larry Darrell (played in 1946 by Tyrone Power), who returns from pilot duties during World War I,* deeply affected by the death and devastation he's seen, and takes a period of time to "find himself"—a lot of time.  This seems odd to his high society friends, especially the family of his fiancee, Isabel (Gene Tierney), who can't seem to understand why Larry won't settle down, put his nose to the grindstone and make sure that she gets to live in the manner she's accustomed to.  Larry travels to Paris, ostensibly under the supervision of Isabel's prissy Uncle Elliott (Clifton Webb) (who does NOT approve), but Larry would rather live the life of a bohemian, working menial jobs.  After a year's separation, Isabel comes to visit and is appalled by Larry's simple living conditions.  She breaks off the engagement after taking one last attempt to seduce Larry back to her way of thinking, then returns to Chicago, where she marries Larry's millionaire friend.

Larry continues his life in Paris, still searching for answers.  Eventually, he makes a pilgrimage to India,** where, after studying and living a monk's existence in the Himalayas, he achieves a measure of happiness, finds his answers and returns to Paris to find that Isabel and her husband have lost everything in the 1929 crash, and are now living off her Uncle's charity.  His old friends have all suffered various tragedies and are at a loss how to cope...and Isabel still loves him, complicating everyone's lives.

The Goulding version hews fairly close to the book, smoothing the rough edges that might have ruffled the feathers of the Hays Office, and implying what could not be said in Maugham's book—Uncle Elliott's gay, Isabel is a too-willing adulteress, and their mutual friend Sophie (Anne Baxter), who suffers her own tragedies, has turned to drink and prostitution.  Larry would seem to be the answer to everyone's problems, but he knows that the problem lies in living in a material world and the cheapening of human life to get ahead.  And the 1946 version also includes one character that the '84 version excluded—the author (played by Herbert Marshall).  Maugham wrote "The Razor's Edge" as a roman a clef, an observance as he made his way between world wars through society as a successful author, settling in Paris and the Riviera.  The post-war version relies a bit too heavily on him, while the John Byrum version with Murray manages to make due without.  The author becomes a sounding board in the book and first film, revealing characters' innermost thoughts—a little too forthcoming, actually (one should never get too cozy with an author)—and revealing a little too much about what they're feeling.

Power is a good Larry, but not a great one (whereas Bill Murray could have been great, if his propensity for ad-libbing goofily hadn't gotten the better of him).  It's a little too hard to distinguish just what about him changes from "troubled" to "enlightened," other than a little too much intensity in the eyes.  Not the greatest of emoters, his war-weary Larry seems merely peeved and a shade brittle, but his post-pilgrimage Larry seems not so enlightened as slightly moony when reflective and somewhat superior and self-satisfied when things go his way.  Gene Tierney's Isabel seems far more shallow than the actress is capable of and when she turns vindictive, its done with a raising of the eyebrows and a haughty air—it's more a pose than a performance (as opposed to Catherine Hicks who wasn't afraid to make Isabel conspiratorial.  Clifton Webb has as much fun with Templeton as Denholm Elliott did (a role John Gielgud coveted), and Anne Baxter has some very good moments as Sophie, although her theatricality gets the better of her in the more demonstrative scenes (it did win her an Oscar, though), but she doesn't hold a candle to Theresa Russell's "fragility with a spine" Sophie.

One comes away with no definitive screen-version of "The Razor's Edge:" you'd like to take the supporting cast of the 80's version, find a new Larry and keep the later's travel footage as a replacement for the pristine (and wholly set-bound) ashram from the '46 version (were they trying to evoke Shangri-La from Lost Horizon?  Why does it look like a Hollywood hotel lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?).  The dissatisfaction is high with both, with flaws impossible to overlook, but there is a great movie in there somewhere, and each film supplies some answers to what that might be like. 

The pilgrimage continues. 

* In the Murray version, he was an ambulance driver.

** In the the latter version, he goes to Tibet.

The Man Who Never Was

The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, 1956) I first read the story of the off-beat plan to distract the Nazis from British invasion plans in grade-school with a scholastic printing of Ewen Montagu's fascinating book.  I knew there'd been a short-lived TV series with Robert Lansing in the 60's—more live-spy than the actual event—but this had nothing to do with that.  This one was a true story.  It started a fascination with the morally ambiguous world of spies (in WWII and beyond) that still fills my trench-coat to this day.

But this story was true; the name of the corpse washed ashore was changed to protect the Allies on the invasion route to Sicily.  

On April 30, 1943, the body of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines was washed ashore on the beach of Huelva, Spain.  Chained to the loop of his trench-coat was a briefcase containing personal documents (so they wouldn't be transferred through official channels) that hinted that the invasion, code-named Operation Husky, would land at Greece and Sardinia, and that  deceptive intelligence efforts would be made to convince the Germans that the invasion would take place attacking Sicily.

It was all a hoax.  There was no Major Martin (although his obituary did appear in The London Times), and the body was a plant by British intelligence forces to sway the Germans from the actual Husky invasion of Sicily, a strategic "must" for the invasion of first Italy, and then the Eastern pincer move on Germany. (Winston Churchill once remarked that "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily").  The plan, dubbed "Operation Mincemeat"—in the hope that the Germans would "swallow" it—was concocted by Flight Lt. Charles Cholmondeley* and Lt. Cmdr. Montagu.  A corpse (that of a 34 year old Welshman Glyndwr Michael, who had no immediate family) was obtained, an elaborate back-history created, documents forged (including love letters and family correspondence), and dumped by submarine off the Spanish coast.

The Germans bought it...to the point where they still anticipated the attack two weeks after the Allies landed in Sicily.  The film of the book by Montagu (played in the film by Clifton Webb) takes a few liberties—it romanticizes some of the incidents (for instance the authorship of the love letters) and creates a follow-up operation that ensures the information is transferred by a German agent (Stephen Boyd, in his film debut) without embellishment to the enemy, but it's an interesting dramatization ("It's the most outrageous, disgusting, preposterous, not to say barbaric idea I've ever heard, but work out full details and get back to me in the morning!") about one of the wierder operations in a war full of them. 

* Cholmondeley got the idea from a multi-schemed memo by one intelligence officer named Ian Fleming (who was inspired by a novel by Basil Thomsen), who in 1953 would create his own intelligence agent, James Bond.

Laura

"Laura" (Otto Preminger, 1944) What can you say about a 25-year old advertising executive who died? That she was loved to the point of being despised, and beautiful enough to be utterly destroyed. That her life was mercurial enough to be inconvenient, and that it was easier to love her more when she was dead. A woman more ideal in memory than in life.

Women. Can't live with 'em. Can't shoot 'em in the head.

"Laura" is a mixture of film noir, murder mystery and working-girl-drama so oxidized as a classic that one could be forgiven for not recognizing the loopy movie this film really is. Both Tierney and Andrews underplay their roles while Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson over-play theirs (and what's the idea of Webb's character, Waldo Lydecker, inviting himself along as detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) goes to interview suspects? Does McPherson think Lydecker's constant stream of sarcasm will badger a confession out of them?) all of them, just this far from scratching each others' eyes out.

It's the story of hustling advertising agency prodigy Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), who counts among her friends the rich and powerful, none more so than Lydecker, whose mentorship and influence have catapulted Laura to the top of her profession. Now, the police are investigating her grisly late-night death by shotgun blast, with the lead detective suspecting no one and everyone, but the three folks most often in his cynical glare are Lydecker--whose jealousy of Laura's man-friends has led to extreme actions, her on-again-off-again fiancee ne'er-do-well Shelby Carpenter (Price) and Laura's aunt, Ann Treadwell (Anderson) who wants Carpenter for herself.

That's quite a tangled web. But things get stickier as McPherson spends more time than necessary investigating at Laura's apartment, staring at her portrait. In fact, McPherson becomes obsessed--or possessed--by the ghost of Laura.*

Then things get interesting.

The dialogue is arch, along with the performances, and Dana Andrews' barely expressive detective is a constant source of irritation to a group of people expert at irritation. The wise-cracks fly fast and loose, the cinematography (which justly won an Oscar) is lush and filled with shadows, and Preminger keeps the talk-y movie moving, right up to the shot of a splintered clock face that signals an end to a "timeless love." The whole movie could be the over-heated fever dream of a purple-prose life being flashed before your eyes.

High-toned, but low-down in the murk of motivation, "Laura" is just complicated enough to bear repeat viewing. And, besides "Vertigo," it's one of the rare Hollywood movies that dares to question the validity of that essential movie-dream, the "thing called love."

Plus, I always like to catch that moment when Dana Andrews barely smiles.

But she's only a dream....**

* Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be romantic and all that, but I find it creepy--like those women who "fall in love" and marry axe-murderers in prison...because they can have the fevered romance, without having to actually live with the monster.

** I found interesting that this portrait that McPherson falls in love with is not a painting, per se--it's a studio photograph given the "Thomas Kinkade" treatment, with paint strokes added to make it appear to be a painting. And knowing how movie-cameras tend to make paintings appear real (the traditional trick behind matte shots), they had to "paint an inch thick" to fool the camera.