Bill Murray had been one of the bright stars of the original Saturday NIGHT LIVE. He had a good transition into films in films like STRIPES. But in 1984 he felt he had to show his growth as a performer. He left comedies and moved into straight drama. For some reason he chose to remake Somerset Maugham's novel-into-movie THE RAZOR'S EDGE. The results were not bad, but they were not as good as later dramatic films that Murray made in the 1990s and 2000s.
The best thing I found about this version of THE RAZOR'S EDGE (which I saw in a movie house in Flushing in 1984) was the opening. Somehow in the 1946 film version, the horrors of the western front were not as well developed in the final movie (a distinct weakness, by the way). Larry Darell (Murray in this version and Tyrone Power in the 1946 version) is, like Ernest Hemingway, an ambulance driver. In Murray's film he is taken under the wing of a cynical ambulance driver who explains how to view things when the pressure of enemy bombing or shelling gets to you. After all, you have to drive to the front lines, pick up the wounded and dying, and bring them back to the hospitals behind the lines. You can get killed in a barrage.
The cynical driver, when he witnesses the death of some other ambulance trainees, starts giving a speech of how much he disliked them, and how he won't miss them. His eyes and face show he is lying, and is saying this for his mental health. Subsequently the cynical driver and his assistant are killed. Murray, who has grasped this lesson, repeats the same speech regarding the cynical driver that the latter had given earlier.
This was a key scene in the story - it explains how Larry is shattered by the horrors of the war. And it sets the stage (better, actually) for his search for answers in the Far East than Tyrone Power had demonstrated in the earlier version.
That was the best difference between the two films. Otherwise, the Murray film lacked the cast strengths of the Power film. Besides Power, Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter ("Oscar" winner here), John Payne, Herbert Marshall and Elsa Lanchester added cast strength there. But here the best performer was Murray, and only Denholm Elliott as Elliott Templeton really was good, and he was pale compared to the great Webb in the same role (although he was able to give an unbowdlerized version of Elliott's final line of dialog). This is a fair film version, but the original is better.
The best thing I found about this version of THE RAZOR'S EDGE (which I saw in a movie house in Flushing in 1984) was the opening. Somehow in the 1946 film version, the horrors of the western front were not as well developed in the final movie (a distinct weakness, by the way). Larry Darell (Murray in this version and Tyrone Power in the 1946 version) is, like Ernest Hemingway, an ambulance driver. In Murray's film he is taken under the wing of a cynical ambulance driver who explains how to view things when the pressure of enemy bombing or shelling gets to you. After all, you have to drive to the front lines, pick up the wounded and dying, and bring them back to the hospitals behind the lines. You can get killed in a barrage.
The cynical driver, when he witnesses the death of some other ambulance trainees, starts giving a speech of how much he disliked them, and how he won't miss them. His eyes and face show he is lying, and is saying this for his mental health. Subsequently the cynical driver and his assistant are killed. Murray, who has grasped this lesson, repeats the same speech regarding the cynical driver that the latter had given earlier.
This was a key scene in the story - it explains how Larry is shattered by the horrors of the war. And it sets the stage (better, actually) for his search for answers in the Far East than Tyrone Power had demonstrated in the earlier version.
That was the best difference between the two films. Otherwise, the Murray film lacked the cast strengths of the Power film. Besides Power, Clifton Webb, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter ("Oscar" winner here), John Payne, Herbert Marshall and Elsa Lanchester added cast strength there. But here the best performer was Murray, and only Denholm Elliott as Elliott Templeton really was good, and he was pale compared to the great Webb in the same role (although he was able to give an unbowdlerized version of Elliott's final line of dialog). This is a fair film version, but the original is better.