Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1946

The Contenders:

The Best Years of Our Lives (winner)
Henry V
It’s a Wonderful Life
The Razor’s Edge
The Yearling

I've Got My Philosophy

Film: The Razor’s Edge
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

Older movies are often preachy. It more or less comes with the territory, and so I try to ignore it whenever I can. With a film like the Razor’s Edge, though, the moralizing happens a lot in the first part of the film. It more or less goes away in the second two acts, but boy is this thing preachy at the start. The good news is that if you can bear down on the film for the first hour or so, it opens up into something that becomes interesting.

Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power, and a part of me hopes that this character’s middle name is also Darrell) has returned from World War I in a deep psychological funk. On the last day of the war, one of his friends died, and specifically died saving Larry’s life. Larry’s existential crisis has led him to a place where he is motivated only to determine what his life means. He’s turned down so potential jobs to “find himself,” which means heading to Paris and delaying his proposed marriage to Isabel Bradley (Gene Tierney). This is all to the good in the opinion of Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb), Isabel’s uncle. Elliott is not a fan of Larry because Larry has turned down multiple chances to join society and has opted instead to be a much more common man.