Edge of Doom (1950) Reviews

• One of the bleakest, most pessimistic films of the noir cycle

  bmacv2001-10-26

  When Edge of Doom was first released, audiences turned away from it with the coldest of shoulders. It was yanked out of circulation so that a pair of bookends could be shot, in which the story becomes a kind of parable told by a wise old rector (Dana Andrews) to a younger priest undergoing a pastoral crisis. The filmmakers shouldn't have bothered: Edge of Doom remains one of the bleakest, least comforting offerings of the entire noir cycle (no mean feat), and probably the most irreligious movie ever made in America. When Farley Granger's devout but tubercular mother dies, it precipitates a rampage against everything that makes up the prison of his life: his ugly urban poverty; his penny-pinching employer who offers promises rather than a raise; the Church, which once refused burial to his father, a suicide, and is now refusing his mother the "big" funeral he thinks he owes her; the smarmy, sanctimonious undertaker. Long story short, he ends up murdering a crusty, hell-and-brimstone priest. The police nab him for a robbery he didn't commit but end up with a different murder suspect. But compassionate pastor Dana Andrews (now in flashback) suspects the truth.... There's something almost endearingly Old Left about the savagery of the indictment leveled against society's Big Guns: Church, police and capitalism. The slum where Granger lived with his mother makes Ralph and Alice Kramden's Chauncey Street digs in Brooklyn look cozily inviting (Adele Jergens, as the slatternly wife of a neighbor, observes, "Smart people don't live here"); outside, the nighttown is noir at its most exhilaratingly creepy. It's easy to see why the public, on the cusp of the fabulous fifties, shunned this movie, whose unprettiness is uncompromised. But it's as succinct a summing up of the noir vision as anything in the canon.

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• Surprisingly bleak noir style for a film of the early '50s...

  Doylenf2006-09-23

  That a film of this sort should come from Samuel Goldwyn is in itself quite a surprise, for he was much more apt to produce something with an uplifting feeling (THE BISHOP'S WIFE, ENCHANTMENT) than a grim study of the lower fringes of society. He gave it some box-office assurance by combining DANA ANDREWS (as a priest) and FARLEY GRANGER (as a victimized youth from the slums). But in telling a story of how the poor boy becomes a criminal on the run, it fails to inject enough ingredients to make the screenplay work on any level. And that, too, is surprising, since the screenplay is the work of Philip Yordan and it is directed in bleak, noir fashion by none other than Mark Robson. But neither of the two priest characters are well developed--the testy, aging priest who is murdered and his young assistant (played by DANA ANDREWS) are not given the amount of detail they were in the novel to explain their background and motives. This is equally true of the tormented young man who rebels against the Catholic Church's treatment of his father's death and his mother's funeral. Granger, however, is good in his edgy role. Bleak and uncompromising, it nevertheless appeared to be a film ahead of its time and would probably be more appreciated today by fans of gritty film noir, as it captures the streets, the noise, and general atmosphere of a very blighted city.

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• A very personal view of EOD

  songwarrior522006-11-02

  My dad wrote the book that EOD is based on. It is interesting to me that a film that was declared a resounding failure still elicits some interesting commentary. The view that it is possibly the most depressing noir-type film around sounds like a huge compliment to me, given what noir is always striving to do, and indeed it IS a dark film (which makes the above comment about the Stradling cinematography kind of puzzling). Also, the IMDb trivia statement that the film has never been shown on TV can't possibly be true, since I remember seeing it on TV when I was a teen. The novel Edge of Doom used a Crime and Punishment narrative style to tell a contemporary murder story revolving around poverty in a large American city—the template was Philadelphia—and to raise issues about how devotion to church alone can not solve the ills of a modern society. The subject matter is indeed bleak, and indeed ahead of its time. It's certainly a brooding tale, but the novel as literature was considered significant in its day. How Goldwyn came to produce it as a film is a story unto itself, but there can be no doubting that if the film's creative team had stuck to their noir-ish guns, and focused more artfully on the message, it would have been a much better film, not to mention a film that might've actually raised noir above its melodramatic station. (Noir is great, of course, and it's fun to view its style, but a lot of the entries in the genre are tough to watch nowadays, simply because the dialogue is so corny.) Bookending the movie with the corny priest scenes ruined the film's chance to actually probe the poverty theme with seriousness. By soft-pedaling its style, Mark Robson and Philip Yordan failed to capture what was important about the novel. Here was yet another example of Hollywood so afraid of box-office impact that they made a difficult situation worse, when what they might've had was a critically well-received work that would have also failed at the box office but at least might've been counted as art. I can't say I agree with the above post that hails the work of Farley Granger. Granger has been publicly vitriolic about the movie, but in my view he did nothing to help it. He's wooden and self-conscious, and, let's face it, he was never a good actor even when Hitchcock directed him. However, I am also open to the possibility that, had Robson had any conceptual idea about how to best tell this tale, Granger might've made for an interesting screen subject. The Yordan screenplay tweaks trivialized the message and shortchanged the potential for a visual style. Even then, if Robson had brought a creative approach to things, even the screenplay issues might've been overcome. EOD the film remains a historical curiosity, but it's mostly an example of what happens when unsympathetic, apparently clueless, filmmakers are hired to tackle a subject of seriousness, which they can only reduce to cinematic hackwork. It could have been, it SHOULD have been, a much better movie.

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• Worth the free fall into glowering gloom just for the grit and pluck...

  secondtake2011-03-05

  Edge of Doom (1950) It would be hard to find a movie as unrelentingly dark and brooding as this one. Everyone from the priest to the hero's mother, from the sweet girlfriend to the neighbor down the hall is burdened with the pain of everyday life. Most of the scenes at night, too, or inside dark rooms and hallways, or both, so the shadowy world only descends lower. And this is partly what makes it really work. Dana Andrews is a worldly, reflective priest in a tale of redemption, actually, against all this gloom. The protagonist is a young Farley Granger, who gets in trouble from a single rash act, and is in a tailspin for the rest of the movie. From one shadowy scene to another, running through dark streets or hiding in a dingy apartment, Granger has to face his inner demon. But Granger, like Andrews, is a thoroughly decent person inside, and the movie, despite all the negative vibes, is about faith and goodness. Director Mark Robson is not a big name, of course, but he paid his dues with some of the best--Robert Wise and Val Lewton. And he came out of an era of Hollywood that was uncompromising in its technical quality. It shows. This is a movie with a single main theme, and if it has impassioned acting and high dramatics (at times) it also is gritty and single minded, too. The plot is packaged too neatly, and littered with Andrews narrating through the long flashback. That's its one limitation--that it's limited. But what it does do it does with real intensity.

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• Sad and very dark

  blanche-22007-09-26

  Farley Granger is a young man on the "Edge of Doom," in this 1950 film also starring Dana Andrews, Mala Powers and Paul Stewart. When a young priest wants to change parishes, Father Roth (Dana Andrews) tells the story of Martin Lynn (Granger), saying that what happened with Martin showed him that, as a priest, he was in the right place. Martin Lynn is a young man who is having trouble making ends meet as a delivery man for a florist; he has a chronically ill mother, and he wants to be able to move her to Arizona. However, after working with the florist for four years, he still can't get a raise. When his mother dies, he wants a high-priced funeral for her. He goes to the church rectory, as his mother was deeply religious and, despite living in near poverty, always gave what she could to the parish church. In an ensuing argument with an old, tired and tough priest (Harold Vermilyea), Martin hits him over the head, and the priest dies. Later, he's picked up, not for the murder, but for the robbery of a movie theater actually done by his neighbor (Paul Stewart). Though released, the detective in charge (Robert Keith) is still suspicious of him. "Edge of Doom" is a grim noir that never lets up; Martin Lynn can't get a break, not from his boss, the funeral director or the church. His girlfriend (Mala Powers) at first feels there is no place for her in his life because of his mother. After the mother dies and Paul commits murder, he breaks up with her. His only support is Father Roth, whom he doesn't like - he resents the church for not burying his father on hallowed ground when he committed suicide and for taking his mother's money. It's not often in a film that one sees a priest killed - and with a cross yet. The acting is good if not great. Farley Granger is sympathetic as Martin. He was often cast in this type of role. Dana Andrews does an okay job as the priest, but is a little too precious. The way to play a priest is the way Spencer Tracy did - as a man first. Andrews tries to put on a priestly air but it seems forced. Apparently this film was not well received upon release and was withdrawn to add the very beginning, where Andrews begins to tell the story, and the very end, which comes back to the present time with Andrews and the priest. It doesn't really help the film's relentless, depressing tone. Don't watch this one if you need a smile or a feel-good movie.

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