NR | 2 h 25 min | Drama, Romance | 1946
Director Edmund Goulding’s multi-Oscar nominated film draws inspiration from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel and defines selflessness as the route to meaningful self-fulfillment.
Ex-soldier Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power), perturbed by the fragility of life he witnesses in World War I, totters through the turgid world of his socialite friends, searching for peace and purpose. He finds neither, whether in Chicago where fiancée Isabel Bradley (Gene Tierney) awaits, or in Paris which he frequents. So he heads on a journey to find to a holy man (Cecil Humphreys) in India. Up in the mountains, things start to make sense.
A soldier once died to save Darrell’s life, which prompted his search for purpose. Now, he discovers that purpose: living for others in need.
Bradley would gladly have waited to marry him if he hadn’t kept discarding the superficial for the simple. Furious, she marries their mutual friend, Gray Maturin (John Payne); fortunately for her, he inherits his broker father’s millions. Another mutual friend, Sophie (Anne Baxter) marries lawyer Bob MacDonald (Frank Latimore).
Before Darrell returns to the world of his successful friends, the friends encounter the fragility of life, too, in many setbacks. Maturin loses his fortune in a market crash and is buoyed only by largesse from Bradley’s wealthy uncle Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb), who later suffers a nervous breakdown. Distraught Sophie MacDonald, who’s lost both her husband and their baby in an accident, is now vulnerable to Darrell’s charms, but Bradley, still possessive of him, has other plans for MacDonald. Meanwhile, patronizing Templeton will do anything to keep his niece from Darrell.
Walking this razor’s edge as it were, Darrell shares with his friends a newfound sense of self, hoping they’ll find theirs. Wisely, Maugham and Goulding dispel notions that the exotic East holds miracle cures for the West; self-transformation lies within, in freedom from narcissistic manipulation. Geography has nothing to do with it.
Fabulous Cast, Character Study
Maugham inserts himself as a character, a writer who befriends them all, a narrator-witness to Darrell’s transformation, within and without. Clinging Bradley is the antithesis of charitable Darrell. Needy, Maturin and Sophie MacDonald mirror each other, but differently. When Bradley wishes them well, Darrell’s able to help.Raised in France, Maugham was bullied in school for his poor English. He knew a bit about being an outsider and wields that in characterizing Darrell.
Tierney as Bradley depicts tenderness as she wavers between longing for the winsome Darrell and loathing his contentment. Power is charismatic as Darrell, who discovers wisdom but wears it lightly. Their scenes in Paris feel real because Tierney and Power could speak fluent French; he had French ancestry, and she’d learned while attending school in Switzerland.
He places the words of the holy man in his heart: “The road to salvation is difficult to pass over ... as difficult as .... the sharp edge of a razor.” The holy man nudges Darrell back to his relationships and responsibilities.
He learns that he doesn’t have to desert the world to find enlightenment, but to live in the world and love those in it, not for their own sake but for God “in them.”
