Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene

Dangerous Edge: Graham Greene's Intrigue and Depression
Dangerous Edge: Graham Greene's Intrigue and Depression

During his tenure with British intelligence, Graham Greene reported directly to the notorious Soviet mole Kim Philby. It was rather fitting the espionage novelist and chronic adulterer would be so closely associated with such a significant betrayer. Yet, Greene consistently offered tortured defenses of his friend. He was "complicated" that way. Thomas P. O'Connor surveys the writer's work and ironic life in Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene (promo here), which airs this Friday night on most PBS outlets.

Greene was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he was nominated for an Oscar. Indeed, with so many Greene's books and screenplays produced for the big screen, O'Connor has a wealth of cinematic imagery available to illustrate Greene's oeuvre, without ever scraping the bottom of the barrel. In fact, at least two of Greene's scripts became outright masterpieces: The Third Man and...

A Graham Greene Biopic Walks the "Dangerous Edge" Between His Failures and Successes
Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene is a comprehensive look at the life and work of British author Graham Greene. While he is best known for his novels The Third Man, The Quiet American, and The End of the Affair, he also worked in British counter-intelligence for a time and spoke out against the United States government's misguided attempts at nation-building. As a writer and a public figure, he has a complicated but important legacy as a man who fought for the underdog and fought to survive his severe depression as thoughts of suicide plagued him his entire life. PBS has produced an excellent documentary that covers all these aspects of his life while still staying focused and informative.

I knew I was in for a treat with this documentary when I saw that Sir Derek Jacobi was the film's narrator and that Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead) would be reading Graham Greene's letters and other correspondence. I had heard of The Third Man but had no idea of its...

Kind of Blah
Watched this last night and had high hopes for it. I've read a great deal of what Greene has written, but I only knew a very little about his life. What I had known before this was his promiscuity and he use of alcohol and drugs and his constant travelling. Just a reading of a few of the books would give one an idea of what his inner life must have been like, though.

This film did give a decent outline of his life and there was a fair amount about his depression and promiscuity, but it was put together in a lackluster and really in the end boring way.

For a guy who wrote until really the end of his life and produced good work for most of that time the feel for his books was lacking. He traveled all over most of his life "to escape the boredom" he said and some of that was certainly covered, but once again the film makers just couldn't draw you in.

Still if you really know little or nothing about his life and would like to learn more this would be a...

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