--- title: "The Razor's Edge" year: 1946 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-razors-edge" fi1m_score: 63 critics_score: 51 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T01:33:31.862022+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T01:33:32.255909+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Razor's Edge (1946) Directed by Edmund Goulding · 2h 25m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 63** · Critics 51 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Tyrone Power goes looking for God and finds a painted mountain; Gene Tierney, meanwhile, finds the film > Edmund Goulding’s Maugham adaptation is a handsome, well-acted film about society with a spiritual quest stuck in the middle of it. Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb make the society worth the visit; the quest is a man on a painted mountain. ## Synopsis Chicago, after the First World War. Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) comes home from flying in France with a friend’s death on his conscience and no wish to go into an office. His fiancée Isabel Bradley (Gene Tierney) wants a wedding, a house and a husband who works; her uncle Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb), a snob who lives in Paris, agrees with her. Gray Maturin (John Payne), a broker’s son, offers Larry a job in the firm. Larry wants instead to go to Paris and loaf, as he puts it, and find out whether God exists. At an engagement party the novelist W. Somerset Maugham (Herbert Marshall) watches all this, along with Sophie MacDonald (Anne Baxter) and her husband Bob (Frank Latimore). Larry sails. Isabel gives him a year. ## Review Edmund Goulding’s film of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel runs 145 minutes and is about a man who wants to know why there is evil in the world. That is a hard thing to put on a screen, and Lamar Trotti’s screenplay makes the sensible decision to surround him with people who want simpler things: money, a good marriage, a seat beside the right duchess. Those people are the best thing in the film, and the question keeps interrupting them. Gene Tierney is the reason to watch. Isabel begins as a pretty, practical girl who wants a house and a husband who goes to an office, and Tierney plays her with her chin up and her eyes doing something else. The second half gives her a stretch we will not describe, and she takes it with both hands; she is the only person on screen who seems to have noticed that Maugham was writing about appetite. Clifton Webb’s Elliott Templeton is the other pleasure, a snob who has made a career of knowing where to sit, and Webb delivers every line as if handing you his card. We laughed at him more than at anything else here. Anne Baxter’s Sophie is a small part that becomes a large one. In the early scenes she is a happy young wife who reads poetry, and Baxter plays her so lightly that you barely notice her. What the film does with her afterwards moved us more than the first hour had led us to expect, and the reason is that Baxter never asks for sympathy. Herbert Marshall plays Maugham himself, drifting through the story in a good overcoat, watching people at dinner and occasionally reporting what they said when he was not there. It is an odd device, and Marshall makes it work by declining to be interesting. Tyrone Power is the problem, or rather the part is. Larry Darrell is a man to whom things happen on the inside, and Power, who is handsome and sincere and photographs like a statue, is left to look thoughtful while other people explain him. When the film follows him down a coal mine to Fritz Kortner’s drunken, learned Kosti, it briefly finds a rhythm. When it follows him up a mountain, it stops dead. Cecil Humphreys’s Holy Man sits in front of a painted sky and tells Larry that the path to salvation is hard, and Alfred Newman’s strings rise as if something had been said. We were bored, and then a little embarrassed on the film’s behalf, because it so plainly believes it has just shown us the meaning of life. The studio work elsewhere is handsome. Arthur Charles Miller lights the Chicago drawing rooms and Paris cafés in a bright, even gloss with deep blacks behind, and the European sets have the right clutter of glasses, mirrors and waiters; the Indian ones do not, and the film seems to know it, because it hurries through them. J. Watson Webb Jr. cuts the parties with some snap and the sermons with none, though we suspect there was nothing to cut to. Newman’s score does its best work in the bars. Goulding’s next film, *Nightmare Alley*, made the following year, was about a man who fakes a spiritual gift, and it is a sharper picture than this one about a man who is supposed to have the real thing. Darryl F. Zanuck’s production spends freely on manners, and the film is at its best when it is being a little cruel about them. See it for Tierney, Webb and Baxter, and treat Larry’s enlightenment as the price of admission. At 145 minutes it is long, and the mountain is where you will feel it. At home you can make tea during the sermon and be back for the next dinner party, which is where the film wanted to be all along. *Fi1m score 63, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The film has everything for virtually every type of film fan and is fundamentally good cinematurgy that moves. It is a solid love story with appealing performances, especially from Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, and Clifton Webb. [Read](https://variety.com/1945/film/reviews/the-razor-s-edge-1200414666/) - **Time Out**, TM (65/100, inferred): The film is a glossy but kitschy Hollywood adaptation of Maugham's novel about a WWI veteran's spiritual quest, with strong studio recreations of Europe but weaker Indian sequences. Goulding's direction and standout performances, especially Gene Tierney's, elevate the material. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-razors-edge) - **Slant Magazine**, Jeremiah Kipp (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the adaptation well-intentioned and well-made but hopelessly dated, with the spiritual quest of the lead character unengaging and sermon-like on screen. The surrounding melodramatic intrigues and supporting characters, especially Isabel, provide the film's main pleasures. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-razors-edge-dvd/) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (30/100, inferred): The adaptation faithfully but simplistically renders the novel's mysticism as easy and superficial, with the story and characters lacking mental agility or depth. The cast performs in a vague, somnambulistic manner with few standout moments amid the lavish but empty production. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/11/30/1946-11-30-086-tny-cards-000022360) ## Details - **Director:** Edmund Goulding - **Director:** Edmund Goulding - **Screenplay:** Lamar Trotti - **Novel:** William Somerset Maugham - **Cinematography:** Arthur Charles Miller - **Editor:** J. Watson Webb Jr. - **Music:** Alfred Newman - **Producer:** Darryl F. Zanuck - **Cast:** Tyrone Power as Larry Darrell; Gene Tierney as Isabel Bradley; Herbert Marshall as W. Somerset Maugham; Anne Baxter as Sophie MacDonald; Clifton Webb as Elliott Templeton; John Payne as Gray Maturin; Lucile Watson as Louisa Bradley; Frank Latimore as Bob MacDonald - **Runtime:** 2h 25m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 19 November 1946 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqYPxtmHX74 ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: CA, FR, IT, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1947: Best Art Direction, Black and White (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *Laura* (1944), Fi1m 86: Tierney and Webb again, in a murder story that is really about a portrait — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/laura.md) - *The Letter* (1940), Fi1m 78: Bette Davis shoots a man in the first minute; Maugham, Marshall and a much tighter film — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-letter.md) - *Nightmare Alley* (1947): Goulding’s next, about a fake mystic; meaner, shorter and better than this one - *Ikiru* (1952), Fi1m 92: Kurosawa’s clerk learns he is dying and goes looking for a point; he finds one — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ikiru.md) - *The Best Years of Our Lives* (1946), Fi1m 90: Three men come home from the next war and nobody talks about God — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-best-years-of-our-lives.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-razors-edge