Tyrone Power – Movie Musings

A bubbling soap full of incidents, disguising itself as a meditation on philosophy

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Tyrone Power (Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (Isabel Bradley), John Payne (Gray Maturin), Anne Baxter (Sophie MacDonald), Clifton Webb (Elliott Templeton), Herbert Marshall (W Somerset Maughm), Lucile Watson (Louisa Bradley), Frank Latimore (Bob MacDonald), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Keith), Cecil Humphreys (Holy Man), Fritz Korner (Kosti)

“What’s it all about?”: a question asked long before Alfie and it’s the one asked by Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) as he returns from World War One to Chicago. Suddenly those garden parties and country clubs all look rather empty and shallow. Larry is engaged to Isabel (Gene Tierney), but he’s not interested in office work and domesticity. He wants to live a little bit, to find out what life is about. Doesn’t he owe that to the man who died in the war to save his life? With just $3k a year (over $50k today, which must help), he heads for the artistic life in Paris. After a year apart, Isabel decides it’s for her (£3k a year? What kind of life is that!) and marries a banker so dull he’s literally named Gray (John Payne). Flash forward to 1929 and the Crash has upturned the lives of the Chicago bourgeoisie – perhaps Larry’s inner contentment will mean more after all?

Adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel – with Maugham as a character, played by the unflappably debonair Herbert Marshall – The Razor’s Edge is a luscious period piece with pretentions at intellectualism but, rather like Maugham, is really a sort of a soapy plot-boiler with a veneer of cod-philosophy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – after all the suds in Razor’s Edge are frequently rather pleasant to relax in – but don’t kid yourself that we are watching a thoughtful piece of cinema. It’s closer in tone to Goulding’s Oscar-winning Grand Hotel than it might care to admit.

Our hero, Larry Darrell, should be a sort of warrior-poet, but to be honest he’s a bit of a self-important bore. Played with try-hard energy by a Tyrone Power desperate to be seen as a proper actor rather than action star, Larry has a blissful “water off a duck’s back” air that sees him meet calamity with a wistful smile and the knowledge that providence evens everything out. Be it the break-up of an engagement or the death of close friend, little fazes Larry who has a mantra or piece of spiritualist advice for every occasion. Bluntly, our hero is a bit of a prig whose middle-class spirituality has all the mystical wisdom of a collection of fortune cookies.

It’s no real surprise that the film’s weakest parts are whenever Larry engages with the vaguely defined collection of homilies and mumbo-jumbo he picks up about spirituality. All this culminates in an almost embarrassingly bad sequence in the Himalayas, where Larry stays under the clichéd tutelage of a shoe-polish-covered Cecil Humphrey as a Holy Man whose every utterance is a vague collection of Diet Yoda aphorisms. Larry, with all the self-importance of the financially secure middle class, returns to the West sublimely certain of his own higher contentment and rather patronisingly looking down on the rest of the characters as shallow, grasping bourgeoisie.

The Razor’s Edge’s insight into human spirituality essentially boils down to “step out of the rat race and you’ll be a better man” – again made much easier, since Larry “forsakes” worldly wealth but can still dapperly turn out to a fancy function in a perfect tux. To be honest it becomes a bit wearing to see the other characters treat him like a sage and more than a bit mystifying why Isabel remains stubbornly obsessed with him for her whole life.

But if she wasn’t, we’d lose a large chunk of the appeal of the movie. The Razor’s Edge’s philosophy may be paper thin, but as a soap it’s spot on. And the scheming, manipulative, vindictive, snobby and entitled Isabel is a gift of a part, seized with relish by Gene Tierney. Isabel wants Larry, not so much because of who he is but because he belongs to her, and she can’t believe he was willing to let her jilt him without a fight. The epitome of the self-obsession of the modern age that Larry has rejected, Isabel consistently puts herself first, clings to the luxuries of high living and can barely hide her bored disinterest in the tedious Gray (a perfect role for the solid but uninspiring John Payne). Isabel schemes and attempts seduction of the saintly Larry, and her hissable antics provides The Razor’s Edge with much of its enjoyable thrust.

Because as a soap is where this film is most happy. It’s actually very well staged and shot by Goulding, full of carefully considered camera moves (including a late “wham” line which we don’t see a character react to, leaving their response open to our interpretation) and skilfully using depth of plain to showcase a series of luscious sets and impressively recreated Parisian streets on sound stages. The Razor’s Edge has a lot of very professional Hollywood craft behind it.

Its event-filled sub plots also give a host of excellent scenes and fun dialogue to its supporting cast. Anne Baxter won an Oscar as the tragic Sophie, a bubbly socialite (and old flame of Larry’s) from Chicago, whose husband and baby are killed in a car accident, tipping her into years of alcoholism and (it’s implied) life as a “good-time-girl” in a seedy Parisian bar. Baxter seizes this role for what it’s worth, from initial charming naivety to tear-streaked discovery of her bereavement to fidgety attempts at sobriety after Larry decides to marry her to keep her on the straight-and-narrow (needless to stay, temptation is put in the way of the pacing, smoking, fist-forming Sophie by the blithely shameless Isabel). It’s a very effective and sympathetic performance.

Clifton Webb, at the time Hollywood’s leading waspish figure of camp, has an Oscar-nominated whale of a time as Elliot Templeton, preening but generous socialite, delighting the finer things in life (from fine wines to perfectly stitched dressing gowns) who provides a catty sounding board to Isabel and whose final hours are spent bemoaning being snubbed by a countess. Herbert Marshall delivers a perfect slice of British reserve and gently arch commentary as Maugham (the real Maugham prepared a script which was junked by the studio, ending his Hollywood career there and then), purring his dialogue with his rich, velvet tones.

It serves to remind you that The Razor’s Edge works best as an event-packed piece of social drama, which it swiftly becomes as deaths, tragedy, alcoholism, scheming and feuds pile on top of each other in the second half with the blissful Larry casting a quietly judgemental but kind eye over everything around him. For all its attempts to look into the human condition, this is where The Razor’s Edge is at its best: engaging supporting characters and a hissable villain, all leading to a series of juicy plot developments. For all its literary pretentions, it’s at best a shallow From Here to Eternity.

A court case hinges on a heck of a twist or two in Wilder’s well-mounted Christie adaptation

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Tyrone Power (Leonard Vole), Marlene Dietrich (Christine Vole), Charles Laughton (Sir Wilfrid Robarts), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Plimsoll), John Williams (Mr Brogan-Moore), Henry Daniell (Mr Mayhew), Ian Wolfe (Carter), Torin Thatcher (Mr Myers QC), Norma Vaden (Emily Jane French), Una O’Connor (Janet McKenzie), Francis Compton (Justice Wainwright)

Agatha Christie is better known for detectives who unearth murderers, not lawyers defending those accused in court. But that doesn’t mean Witness for the Prosecution, a very effective courtroom drama, shirks on classic Christie flourishes. Witness has a single stonking twist that huge numbers of people never see coming (the end of the film comes with a sonorous warning entreating people not to spoil the surprises, the sort of anti-spoiler warning that would make Marvel proud).

Leonard Vole (an unlikely Tyrone Power) is the soldier and would be entrepreneur, who stands accused of the murder of a rich older woman (Norma Vaden) who conveniently left Vole her money. Defending Vole is richly-toned, highly-skilled barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Charles Laughton), recovering from a heart attack and doing his very best to dodge the overly attentive concern of his private nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester). Vole’s case looks difficult, with much circumstantial evidence stacked against him and worries about whether his German wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich) will stand by him or not?

Billy Wilder directs with a smooth professionalism – he later modestly claimed of his Oscar nomination, that it was like giving the crew that moved Michelangelo’s Pietá an award for best sculpture – but his real contribution (with fellow writer Harry Kurnitz) was sharpening the dialogue, expanding Christie’s characterisation (in particular adding much more shrewdness and eccentric pomposity to Robarts) and upping the zip of Christie’s original. It certainly met with the approval of the grandé dame of crime who listed this, and Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express, as the only two adaptations of her work she liked.

The film is largely based around the courtroom dynamics, as witnesses are examined and cross examined and facts gently dragged into the light. There is plenty of quality theatrics, not least since Robarts and his opposition counsel Myers (a fearsome Torin Thatcher) are more than a little skilled at keeping things sparky for the jury. There is a hint of cynicism in Witness: Robarts needs to convinces himself of a client’s innocence, but there is a suggestion this is because it helps him work out how to effectively defend them, less because of any moral reasons. And certainly, the entire mechanics of the trial operates largely as a show, an entertainment with jokes and compelling stories offered by both sides.

There is of course no better showman than Robarts. Played by Charles Laughton in one of his last great – and possibly most enjoyable – performance, Robarts is an affectionate, witty performance of carefully studied eccentricity and barking bluffness. But there is also a vulnerability in him: Robarts needs to belief in his own legend and his ability to separate truth from lie (he even prides himself on his “monacle test”, using a reflection from it to shine in suspects eyes, believing a liar will get flustered and trip themselves up – needless to say it turns out to be faulty).

Wilder – with Laughton as a brilliant collaborator – transforms Robarts into a far more forceful and charismatic figure, making the late plot twists even more of a shock. If someone as professionally adept and plugged in as Robarts can be taken in, what chance do the rest of us have? Oscar-nominated, Laughton, a twinkle permanently in his eye, powers through moments of high court theatricality but also heartily enjoys the banter of real life, taking a real delight in his schoolboy mischief as he persists in having his own way.

A large part of that, is a running of dodging treatments and sticking to a diet of things that are bad with him. Wilder’s finest change from the original, in introducing Robart’s ill health and his love-hate relationship with his nurse Miss Plimsoll. Who is, of course, played by Elsa Lanchester, Laughton’s real-life wife. The chemistry between these two is spot-on, with Lanchester (also Oscar nominated – and unlucky to lose to Miyoski Umeshi in Sayonara) in particular playing the combination of world-weary exasperation and growing affection for Robarts perfectly.

Combined with those twists, it’s the interplay between these two that is the real highlight in the film – well that and the twists. Many of those twists are bound up with Marlene Dietrich’s character. Dietrich gives one of her most colourful and wide-ranging performances here. The secrecy of the film probably stopped her from landing an Oscar nomination (much to her regret – Wilder even apologised to her). Power is miscast – he lacks the required natural innocence and looks both too old and incongruously American – but fortunately spends most of the film in the dock.

The final twist is a doozy, perfectly delivered by the actors and Wilder. Wilder directs throughout with quiet authority – as well as fine sense of humour, in particular a stair lift scene that sees Robarts using the device as a tool to dodge being told what to do. Laughton and Lanchester in particular are wonderfully funny. It’s got some excellently handled courtroom tricks and you won’t forget how it turns out. It’s a solid example of Wilder’s skill behind the camera – but a very enjoyable film and a must for Christie fans.