Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fantastic!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A man's search for the meaning of life is captured in this Darryl F. Zanuck production, directed by Edmund Goulding, and screenwriter Lamar Trotti's interpretation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel. The film was nominated for Best Picture (and B&W Art Direction-Interior Decoration) by the Academy and won Anne Baxter an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category; Clifton Webb was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, and Lucile Watson play key roles as does Herbert Marshall, who plays (and narrates the story as) novelist Maugham.Larry Darrell (Power) returns from World War I wondering why he survived when a comrade of his, who was struck down just before its end, did not. This seemingly random occurrence causes him to question life. Raised without a religious or spiritual foundation, he asks "what's the point?" and considers loafing but instead decides to begin a quest for meaning. His upper class fiancée Isabel Bradley (Tierney), whose physical if not emotional attraction to Larry is obvious, is initially tolerant of his search despite her socialite uncle Elliott Templeton's (Webb) misgivings; a snob, his attempts to manipulate 'common' Larry out of his niece's life fail. Isabel's mother (Elliott's sister) Louisa (Watson) has long since given up trying to control her strong-willed daughter.But after giving Larry a year, which he spends in Paris, and deciding to abandon an attempt to trap him (the old fashioned way, with pregnancy), Isabel returns to her Midwestern roots and marries the multi-millionaire scion – Gray Maturin (Payne) – that her family had always preferred to Larry. Maugham's character, an acquaintance of Templeton's, observes the goings-on and often offers merely an expression – raised eyebrows or a "knowing look" – to exhibit his opinion; he words are usually neutrally tempered.Baxter plays Sophie, a childhood friend of Larry's – and Isabel's, despite their class differences – that marries Bob MacDonald (Frank Latimore). Her simple yet happy life is dramatically changed when her husband and their child are killed in an automobile accident. Years later, after the stock market crash that wipes out Gray and Isabel, who've come to live with Elliott in Paris, and Larry returns from the Himalayas where a Holy Man (Cecil Humphreys) and the setting helps him to find the spirituality he'd been seeking, they find a despondent and drunken Sophie in a bar in the lower class district of the city. Evidently she'd salved the hurt of her losses with alcohol and prostitution.Larry attempts to save Sophie, leading her to sobriety, and they become engaged to be married. But a jealous and incensed Isabel conspires to bring about Sophie's demise. When Larry later confronts Isabel about her actions, his inherent "goodness", coupled with his selfless gesture (which features a scene with Elsa Lanchester) to a dying Elliott, leaves her (and indeed the audience, through Maugham) to contemplate his chosen path.

"...a cold and failed adaptation of a good book by Somerset Maugham." yes, indeed. if Somerset Maugham's novel was as bad, pretentious and hollow like this film, his novels or short stories would not have survived after one printed edition. this film was poorly adapted by a pin head, then directed by an absolutely non-talent director and furthermore, with terrible casting. yes, we got some of the familiar actors played the main characters of this novel, but most of the chosen actors were just looked so awful in acting that obviously was resulted from a bad screenplay with terrible dialog which made all of the players looked rigid, unnaturally pretentious. i hate to see the guy who played Somerset Maugham, an actor who couldn't even open his eyes normally, the guy in the film looked like a walking stiff. at the opening scene, we saw all the characters were stupidly introduced in a banquet, a party dotted with stupid, boring and pretentious conversation. from such poor arrangement to usher in all the leading roles one by one with stupid dialog and pretentious performances almost by everyone, the film was doomed to be a bad one, as bad as a B movie or TV soap opera. I couldn't believe this movie even got an Oscar or some worthless nominations. if Somerset Maugham himself would now that his novel had been adapted into such lousy film, he might have turned in his grave quite a few times. you guys who gave this film high praises with mucho stars got to have you brains checked right away, because this is an awful film so painful to watch.

If the movie is this good, I must read Somerset Maugham's works. I refuse to see the remake with Bill Murray. This is a Classic. There's even a Sydney Carton-ish event (does anyone else see "the marriage" in this way?). I saw this late late one night, and was frankly astonished that it was made in the 40s. A movie for all times and all ages (well, above 14 or so).Okay, so IMDb wants more from me: a war, a man, a choice: the traditional life of predictable events -or- a life lived one day at a time, asking questions, seeking answers, without regard to the opinion of others, seeking a foundation of meaning and integrity and compassion? This is not the redemptive journey of a broken man, but the journey of a self-respecting man who could have a secure, productive, prestigious, rewarding life, yet chooses instead to ask: Why? What? Who? He's not so much searching for himself, but for his right place in the world he does not yet comprehend.

The Razor's Edge (1946)A stately, dramatic, richly nuanced film about love, true love, and the love of life. It's about what matters, and what doesn't, in a high society world George Cukor could have filmed, but this is by director Edmund Goulding, coming off of a series of war films, and with the great Grand Hotel from 1932 in his trail. Some people will find this a touch stiff or slow, or rather too nuanced, but I think none of the above at all. It has the richness of the Somerset Maugham novel it is based on, and Goulding had just filmed (the same year) Of Human Bondage, another Maugham novel. In both cases, the writer contributed to the screenplay, and the combination of the two of them seems really perfect. Tyrone Power is an interesting lead man, as the idealistic and handsome Larry Darrell, and in some ways his restraint and almost studied dullness at times is maybe what the film needs for its rich, calm trajectory through the twenty years it covers. He's as stable and "good" as the wise, knowing figure of the author, who appears in the form of actor Herbert Marshall. Gene Tierney as Power's counterpart and eventually counterpoint plays the spoiled woman with cool, dramatic perfection. She's got energy and edge and beauty from every angle, and she maintains just that slightest duplicity in every scene, so you are kept on your toes.The only forced and almost laughable section is the one that demands we think profound thoughts...the guru in India being guru to our hero. Unfortunately, it lasts for fifteen minutes, and though there is a spiritual necessity to the experience he has there, this spiritual aspect is implied just as fully in the worldly scenes that follow. I can picture a far better movie without this insert, and I can picture the director picturing it, too. Someone knows why it got patched in, and for whom, but this is what we have. It has to be said the filming, as conservative as it is in many ways, is spot-on gorgeous. The brightly lit, ornamented, busy sets are actually inhabited by the camera, and the figures move together not only across the field, but front to back as well, in triangles and curves of visual activity, yet with fluidity--it's all contained and lyrically delicious. This is done without ostentatious mood, without sharp angles and bold lighting, but instead with spatial arrangements, always full, no emptiness, no great shadows, always something more to see. A great example, easy to find, is the very last scene, just before the shot on the boat when the end titles run. Watch how Marshall walks the long way around Tierney, and then she walks around him, and the camera keeps them framed side to side, front to back. It's nothing short of brilliant, and yet, in style, so different than say Toland doing Kane or, at another extreme, Ozu doing Tokyo Story. But no less spectacular.At one point, a minor character, a defrocked priest, says to Darrell in a working class bar, "You sound like a very religious man who does not believe in God." The movie is really about godliness, or what Maugham calls "goodness" in the end. And some people have it, and share it, and make the world better, God or no God.