Tosh of a very high-minded kind and magnificently entertaining. W Somerset Maugham's novel was a po-faced tale of unmitigated seriousness filled to the brim with 'grand themes' and a better director than Edmund Goulding might have made an equally serious and po-faced film. Goulding's pedigree was trashy women's pictures and he had the knack of making silk purses out of sow's ears. He may have dumbed down Maugham's novel but at least it's lively and at times wonderfully over-the-top as well as being beautifully photographed and designed. It may be deeply silly but it's never dull.
Unfortunately that handsome clothes-horse Tyrone Power is there in the central, crucial role of Larry Darrell, the existentialist hero traveling the world in search of 'enlightenment'. Power lacks the natural gravitas the part demands. Luckily he's surrounded by players who are so much better than he. The under-rated Gene Tierney is wonderfully willful as the rich girl who marries someone else, Anne Baxter, who won the Oscar for her part, is the dipsomaniac Sophie and best of all there is Clifton Webb, robbed of an Oscar, as the arch snob Elliot Templeton who, naturally, has all the best lines. Herbert Marshall also keeps popping up as Maugham, narrating the story as if it's all real.
I think we were meant to find it all profound and uplifting and I'm sure some people took it all very seriously. But we can no more take this seriously than if the original novel had been written by Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann. It's trash and so long as you accept it as such you might just love it. The remake, with Bill Murray, did take itself seriously and failed miserably.
Unfortunately that handsome clothes-horse Tyrone Power is there in the central, crucial role of Larry Darrell, the existentialist hero traveling the world in search of 'enlightenment'. Power lacks the natural gravitas the part demands. Luckily he's surrounded by players who are so much better than he. The under-rated Gene Tierney is wonderfully willful as the rich girl who marries someone else, Anne Baxter, who won the Oscar for her part, is the dipsomaniac Sophie and best of all there is Clifton Webb, robbed of an Oscar, as the arch snob Elliot Templeton who, naturally, has all the best lines. Herbert Marshall also keeps popping up as Maugham, narrating the story as if it's all real.
I think we were meant to find it all profound and uplifting and I'm sure some people took it all very seriously. But we can no more take this seriously than if the original novel had been written by Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann. It's trash and so long as you accept it as such you might just love it. The remake, with Bill Murray, did take itself seriously and failed miserably.