Black hole darkness a result of gravity or temporal distortion?
As an object falls towards a black hole, light emitted by the object will become red-shifted by the gravity. As photons rise out of the gravity well of the black hole they lose energy, they can't slow down but their wavelength is stretched. The object will go dark as it approaches the event horizon due to gravitational redshifting. 

Photons starting from the event horizon would be redshifted to zero energy, and no photons can travel from inside the event horizon.

We also will observe gravitational time dilation, the last second before the object reaches the event horizon will be stretched out indefinitely. The two effects are all part of the same relativistic theory of gravity. You can't unpick the two effects.