Synopsis
The Razor's Edge (1946) is Edmund Goulding's classic drama from the Somerset Maugham novel, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Tyrone Power leads as Larry Darrell, a young man who comes back from the First World War unable to slip back into the comfortable life everyone planned for him.
It opens in the moneyed Chicago set of the early 1920s. Larry keeps stalling his marriage to the wealthy Isabel (Gene Tierney), turns down a respectable career, and goes searching for meaning instead — a coal mine, Paris cafés, finally a monastery in the Himalayas. Ten years on he returns a changed man, and Isabel, married by now, will do almost anything to win him back. Around them circle Clifton Webb as the deliciously snobbish uncle Elliott and a ruined Sophie, the role that earned Anne Baxter the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Goulding treats Maugham not as costume romance but as an argument over whether peace of mind can be bought or only earned by giving things up. It runs nearly two and a half hours and takes its time, and that patience is its old-fashioned strength. What makes it worth your while is how rarely a Hollywood melodrama of that era cared this much about a spiritual quest rather than just the love triangle. Stream The Razor's Edge (1946) online on iFILM.
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