Terry and Gene at the BFI… The Razor's Edge (1946)

Terence Stamp took off his shoes as he sat down to be interviewed about his choice of film for the BFI Screen Epiphanies series, “how many of you bastards have already seen the film?” he asked in a perfectly reasonable tone.

Not many of us had and, in fairness, not many of us would have if it hadn’t been on his recommendation.

Terence Stamp

Mr Stamp was compelling company as he talked through his early film experience from seeing Gary Cooper in Beau Guest to East of Eden. He was refreshingly frank about the impact The Razor’s Edge had on him with vivid memories of his first three viewings: too confused as a child to even frame questions for the uncle who took him, wanting to be Tyrone Power and just wanting Gene Tierney as a teen and then starting his appreciation of the acting talent, especially the mellifluous tones of Herbert Marshall, in his early years at stage school.

He has always maintained a connection with this film over his career and the searching, spiritual core of the story reflects his own journey, particularly after 1969 when, as he says, the business “gave up” on him and the “Cockney spiv” from Plaistow came back stronger and deeper almost a decade later.

He could have talked all night for most of the audience, but before the subject of the conversation could be over-looked (and the Donner cut of Superman 2 delayed…) we had to roll the film.

Get it?

The Razor’s Edge didn’t disappoint. Based on Somerset Maugham’s 1944 novel, it felt like a precursor of the more novelistic style of fifties film, drawing some fine performances from its cast and examining the possibilities of  a life founded on spiritual rather than monetarist value.  Maugham wasn’t the first to look to Indian philosophy – and Stamp isn’t sure he quite “got it” – but he was certainly ahead of the long curve from Kerouac to Harrison.

So was film rather more about nuanced emotion than the linear narrative I’d (lazily as always) expected… it’s not “deliberate” or specific and leaves a lot of room for interpretation by audience and performers alike.

Gene Tierney

Into this zone of uncertainty, slinks Gene Tierney in most emphatic fashion as socialite Isabel Bradley. Hers is a striking performance not merely for the glamour that so entranced young Terence but also for her intensity. Stamp highlighted a moment when arriving at the top of a flight of stairs in her evening gown finery she fixes Larry (Tyrone Power) with a look so full of un-ambiguous intent you know he’s lost if she wants him to be.

Then there’s the moment when Isabel turns and reveals the precise nature of her life and love to Somerset Maugham (Marshall): she has married a man she likes but she’ll only ever love Larry. Such directness is possibly symptomatic of a post war film – life had to lived quickly and to the point – but Tierney slaps you right in the face with it: a more delicate Joan Crawford, but every bit as fierce. She will do what she must even at a cost and as her life goes on she loses her way more to pragmatism.

Fritz Kortner and Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power is also striking as Larry Darrell, a man traumatised by the sacrifice of a comrade in the dying moments of the Great War. He feels like he’s walking in another man’s shoes… a man who simply gave up his own existence so that his pal could carry on. Power carries the towering guilt within and only gives glimpses of the grief that drives him on to find a path worthy of this second chance.

He turns down the chance to join friends as a stock-broker and instead aims to “loaf” until he has found himself. At first Isabelle indulges him, prepared to wait for this process to pass but, finding him in Paris a year later he is still only beginning his journey and material concerns make her break off their engagement.

The great Clifton Webb

Larry goes off to work in a French mine where a fellow worker, Kosti (Fritz Kortner - Lulu’s sugar daddy in Pandora’s Box) tells him of his experiences in India – he didn’t gain enlightenment but grew in self-reliance in his struggle to evade God’s grace.

This is an interesting aspect of the film;  it’s spiritual but it doesn’t seem to be to be aligned to any specific religion just the need to find grace and “goodness”.

As Larry heads off to find a guru, things begin to turn dark at home as his childhood friend, Sophie MacDonald (Anne Baxter) loses both husband and child in a car crash. This begins a downward spiral that sees her addicted to most known vices – Baxter acts her socks off and you can understand how she won the best supporting Oscar.

Anne Baxter acts her way to an Oscar

All of the characters seem lost, even Isabelle’s wealthy uncle Elliott Templeton (the great Clifton Webb) who is a likeable snob finding validation in his position in society, even adopting noble English airs to distance himself still further.

Through this all drifts the author, gently involving himself as part of the plot but only once revealing his feelings as he tells Isabelle how much he appreciates her beauty. He seems wise but then “writers” always have the benefit of hindsight, a smart performance from Herbert Marshall.

Herbert Marshall appraises Gene Tierney

Fortunes turn and all parties end up in Paris after Isabelle’s husband Gray (John Payne) loses all in the stock market crash and they end up lodging with Uncle Elliott.

Larry returns and uses his new-found spiritual awareness to help cure Gray of his post-crash depression. He tries to save Sophie from her death-dive into destitution and it is here that Isabelle’s morality is put to the test…

It's a journey...

The Razor’s Edge is a fascinating film that doesn’t preach or make obvious judgements. Nor does it conform to narrative expectations…well, not mine anyway. I can see why Terence Stamp continues to want his friends to watch it and why he sat through the whole film again with us before beating a hasty retreat as the end credits rolled…

The BFI had secured an excellent print which was a joy to view on the big screen. DVDs are available in all the old familiar places...

Not quite black and white… Laura (1944)

Maybe I’m biting off more than I can chew here but I’ve been concerned with seeing this film since I picked up a lobby card from the BFI… Said card features Dana Andrews staring with intent at Gene Tierney… who wouldn’t… and their expressions are so loaded that you feel something bad has to have happened and that it could quite easily happen again.

Film Noir is so much about hidden meaning and the total uncertainties of explained truth… It’s a mighty genre to summarise succinctly but it seemed to represent a huge moment in American history when it was realised that not only where the bad guys at home as well as abroad but that they were as much American as anyone else… This sounds wild, but just think of the whole horrific series of post-war hearings that pursued this very logic as, perhaps light-headed after winning the World after the War, the USA started to look for its weaknesses.

Noir also looked to play with narrative structures as part of the cinematic depiction of disorientation when, literally, anyone could have done it, the perp might be the “ victim” and the narrator may even be dead.

Gene Tierney stars initially as a painting of Laura Hunt, a woman who appears to have been brutally slain by a shot gun fired directly into her face. Dana Andrews is Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson, the latest in a line of police put onto the case. We first see him in the apartment of Laura’s friend, the writer Waldo Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb.

Lydecker is a wise-cracking writer who beckons the detective into his bathroom where he has been working on a typewriter balanced on a board. Whilst this is eccentric behaviour there’s a strangely feline aspect to Lydecker and his challenging treatment of the policeman, asking him to pass his robe as he leaves the bath and trying to unsettle and belittle him.

Laura was to have married the socialite Shelby Carpenter played by a young and delightfully off-beat Vincent Price. Waldo was disapproving and makes it clear where the motives for the crime may have lain.It seems that the couple had been having mutual second thoughts as their day approached with Shelby drawn to the forceful and harshly-intellectual Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), not obvious competition for Laura, or what we have seen of her from her painting and flashbacks, but none of these people are what they seem.

Very quickly Detective McPherson is out of his depth immersed in the deeper meanings of these unsettling intellectuals. He clings to the rock of certainty provided by the painted image of the murdered Laura. The others spy his weakness.

Then suddenly, Laura returns. She had been away at her country cabin and her radio been broken, meaning that had not heard of her own demise. Or had she?

This emboldens the detective and he suddenly has the purpose of a solid murder mystery to deal with together with one new suspect. Laura’s presence gives him something tangible to deal with and if he can solve the mysteries surrounding her situation he will find the answer to who was actually killed and why.

It would be wrong to go into much further detail about the plot as this film is so much about the surprise of what happens next at every turn until the last.

Needless to say, there are many twists and switches, Shelby shows some confusing loyalty to Laura whilst Ann Treadwell is so coldly logical about the human relationships between the three of them that you want her to be wrong, but you know she’s right. People are that calculating and manipulative.

The murderer turns out to be unexpected but that’s what you’d expect if not maybe who you’d expect...

It’s a stylish and atmospheric film that makes the most of its largely interior locations. Otto Preminger directs with style and focus and it’s certainly a film you have to watch more than once to get full value - one of the very best of its type.

Gene Tierney plays the part wonderfully or should that be inhabits the role? She had the perfect look for the period and the style if not the performance range. No shame in that. She felt the role would have suited Hedy Lamarr but whilst Ms Lamarr would have been perfect for the painting I’m not sure she would have carried the edginess and moral confusion that Tierney manages.

Gene Tierney was one of the most imperfectly beautiful actresses of her generation and that was her strength. You could believe that most of the men would fall for her but that things wouldn’t always go her way.

Laura has just been showcased at the BFI and re-released in some UK cinemas. It’s well-worth watching in cinema – the kind of film watched on TV all too often and maybe taken for granted. But nothing is certain in Laura although it is guaranteed to be also available on DVD from Amazon.