Sidney Hickox's cinematography is a fine example of the best of black and white productions of the 30s and 40s. Hickox employs depth of focus, zoom, tracking, black and white noir-style contrasts, minatures, mattes and montages with equal finesse.
Added to this are carefully executed camera angles, which perfectly capture the appropriate moods which Director Lewis Milestone wishes to achieve. It is a film which can give pleasure even with the sound turned off.
Milestone is completely successful in coaching his cast to work in ensemble fashion, which parallels the comraderie of the Norwegian people trying to off-stand the oppressive Nazi troupes which hold the village in captivity.
Milestone's productional team, from the editing and art direction to the set decoration and scoring, are uniformly fine. But I still didn't like it.
Mr. Milestone, in his quest for anti-war themes, to my mind, got carried away with these unpleasant subjects to the point of their becoming an obscession. Throughout his career the returned to these themes, creating technically memorable, but consciously skewed works.
Like all such genre films, Milestone fell into the traditional pitfall: exploiting effect, without delving into cause. True, effects are the stuff of drama, which in turn becomes a commentary on the ultimate limitations of the craft -- or of writers, who either are unwilling or unable to express a rounded portrait of total truth and balanced essences.
"Edge of Darkness" remains a studio propaganda film, intended to mobilize its audience into patriotic thinking and actions. It's all about we-good-they-bad -- without any hint the enactment depicting merely different sides of the same coin.
Added to this are carefully executed camera angles, which perfectly capture the appropriate moods which Director Lewis Milestone wishes to achieve. It is a film which can give pleasure even with the sound turned off.
Milestone is completely successful in coaching his cast to work in ensemble fashion, which parallels the comraderie of the Norwegian people trying to off-stand the oppressive Nazi troupes which hold the village in captivity.
Milestone's productional team, from the editing and art direction to the set decoration and scoring, are uniformly fine. But I still didn't like it.
Mr. Milestone, in his quest for anti-war themes, to my mind, got carried away with these unpleasant subjects to the point of their becoming an obscession. Throughout his career the returned to these themes, creating technically memorable, but consciously skewed works.
Like all such genre films, Milestone fell into the traditional pitfall: exploiting effect, without delving into cause. True, effects are the stuff of drama, which in turn becomes a commentary on the ultimate limitations of the craft -- or of writers, who either are unwilling or unable to express a rounded portrait of total truth and balanced essences.
"Edge of Darkness" remains a studio propaganda film, intended to mobilize its audience into patriotic thinking and actions. It's all about we-good-they-bad -- without any hint the enactment depicting merely different sides of the same coin.