This unduly sidestepped thriller, one quite shocking for its time, recounts a psychologically troubled young painter named Richard who seeks clinical help for his worrisome condition, but is repeatedly turned away in view of his impecunious financial status. While he struggles through a tangle of procedural red tape and empty promises from indifferent social workers, his mental state grows increasingly discordant. One afternoon, he has a chance meeting with a kindly widow and her two grown daughters, and, seizing an opportunity for some much-needed stability and solicitude, proceeds to guilefully enmesh himself into their lives. It's a satisfactory situation at first, though the ladies soon begin taking notice of his high-strung, impetuous peculiarities and awkward reactions to rather benign matters. Tensions escalate swiftly, and give rise to unspeakable tragedy.
EDGE OF FURY is a surprisingly accomplished low-budget picture, owing chiefly to the artful and highly atmospheric black-and-white cinematography, and the talented key players whose names you probably don't know, but whose faces may seem familiar. It's a downbeat, extremely lurid picture, yet it approaches its core issue of criminal mental illness with a degree of sensitivity and honesty. I suspect this is a possible candidate for the small canon of "film gris"...a proposed subcategory of film noir. The distinctions are somewhat unclear, but seem to ascribe to pessimistic crime dramas with a left-leaning narrative, generally cautioning that violent criminals are a natural product of the very society they prey upon. EDGE OF FURY fits this description, though its production date of 1953 puts it slightly outside the presently delineated film-gris timeline.
All said, a well-made and ahead-of-its-time picture which is quite overdue for rediscovery. 7/10.
