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- Robert Harris
Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946) is a more spiritual film than one might expect in a post-WWII drama. It's based upon the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, who interestingly, includes himself in tale, as he had experienced Eastern culture during visits to India a decade previous.
The Razor's Edge was a halo production of Fox in 1946. It was given a huge budget (imdb estimates 1.2MM) for the time, and a top cast, including Tyrone Power, returning to film for the first time since joining the marines during WWII. His previous appearance was in Crash Dive (1943), available on DVD in Fox's War Classics series.
Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall and Elsa Lanchester fill out the cast.
The Blu-ray, while imperfect -- and that needs a bit of explaining -- still does a superb job of mimicking the looks and textures of nitrate black & white cinematography of the era -- in this case the beautiful work of Arthur Miller (The Mark of Zorro, How Green was My Valley, The Gunfighter).
The Razor's Edge is a long film at 145 minutes, and each of those minutes comes in at an extremely high cost for heavy lifting restorative work.
I'm going to guess a bit here.
With an original nitrate negative destroyed c. 1976, I'd surmise that surviving elements of quality, are possibly a nitrate fine grain master (if MOMA has one), a later safety master (mid-1970s), and a printing dupe.
There are two original nitrate prints in the UCLA collection, including the original studio print.
Stability has not been locked down tight, as one would find in a modern film. The main titles have the nominal bob and weave that one will find in projection, especially from a dupe of a dupe. In this case, it adds to the feeling that one is viewing an actual 35mm print.
The only anomalies on the image are occasional, what appear to be very fine cut-through scratches, ie. white, which are either damage to the actual fine grain, or to the original negative, had it been printed dry gate, so that damage would not have been hidden.
Sitting at a normal viewing distance, these are very fine when they do raise their to the surface, but what's interesting is that the overall image is so beautiful, lustrous and almost has that nitrate black & white glow to it, that I tend to forgive it.
This is not something easily fixable. And if it were attempted, the budget to do so could kill the release of the Blu-ray. With what the archival staff at Fox is up against on these nitrate derived elements, I tend to be a bit more forgiving.
The problems we're discussing here are built in to every film in the Fox library up to 1951-52. While the Technicolor films tend toward disaster, at least, with a delicate hand, the black & whites can be massaged back toward beauty, which is precisely what the Fox archival staff has done here.
The end result is a quite lovely image, with a sheen of second generation (ie. slightly reduced) grain structure, good crisp blacks, nice shadow detail, and an image with clarity high enough to expose the matte paintings which cover the opening sequence.
Audio, which is DTS-HD MA works just fine.
One thing that I've always found interesting, and I presumed it was part of the plan to welcome back Mr. Power after his military service, is his introductory shot, with the camera moving in until he virtually fills the screen. Reminds me, in a more leisurely fashion of John Wayne's introductory shot in Stagecoach.
There's no missing his presence.
No car chases to be found in The Razor's Edge. It's a big budget studio picture of high quality that allows one's brain bit of exercise.
For those unaware, the score is by Fox's great Alfred Newman.
Image - 4.25
Audio - 5
Pass / Fail - Pass
As the latest addition to the 29th Century Fox Studio Classics Blu-ray series, it comes...
Highly Recommended
RAH
