Stick around until the very end of the closing
credits to THE NAKED EDGE and, as the screen fades to black, a disembodied
voice will implore you not to reveal the secret of who killed Jason Roote to
anyone else.
Well - spoiler alert - I'm going to do just
that. There's no other way to provide a full and honest review of this 1961
thriller.
Gary Cooper's final film is a huge
disappointment – and not just because there's no nudity or edginess.
THE NAKED EDGE depends entirely upon a false
premise to sustain the tension, and the frustration I felt at the final
denouement simply compounded the frustration that had already built up over the
course of the story.
Cooper plays George Radcliffe, an American
businessman living in London who comes into a large amount of money at the same
time as a work colleague is found guilty - largely on Radcliffe's testimony -
of murdering their boss, Jason Roote, and stealing 60 thousand pounds.
Radcliffe uses his windfall to go into business
with a slightly shady Michael Wilding, and five years later he's living in an
enormous mansion and being chauffeured to work in a Rolls Royce.
Life is tickety-boo, as the English liked to
say in 1961, until a letter - delayed in the mail for five years - arrives
accusing Radcliffe of Roote's murder and demanding half of the money he
stole. It's opened by Mrs Radcliffe
(Deborah Kerr) who's immediately overwhelmed with doubts and suspicions which
her husband does nothing to dispel by acting in an incredibly shifty manner.
There's faint - very faint - traces of Cary
Grant's character, Johnny Aysgarth, in 'Suspicion' in Cooper's portrayal of
Radcliffe, and a strong sense of director Michael Anderson attempting to evoke
that earlier Hitchcock film, but really all the two share in common is a rotten
ending.
Cooper's forced to drag out the ambiguity way
beyond what's plausible, repeatedly deflecting his wife's increasingly
distraught questions with increasingly ridiculous evasions. Why - when he's
innocent - does he try so damn hard to look like a guilty man?
Everything he does and says is intended to
fuel his wife's suspicions and push her to turn him into the police. Presumably
if she did he'd be able to cop an insanity plea on the basis of his performance
here.
Cooper tries his best with the material he's
got to work with, and given that he was suffering from cancer and would die
before the film was released, he acquits himself well but it is a thankless
role and surely not the swansong he would have hoped for.
If you're willing to not simply suspend your
disbelief but also hang, draw and quarter it as you're jerked around by a
deliberately deceitful and heavy handed plot, and are happy to be deafened by a
ridiculously melodramatic musical score, THE NAKED EDGE is the film for you.
For everyone else there's 'High Noon' and the chance to witness Coop at his
Oscar winning best.
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