On Dangerous Ground (1952)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Nicholas Ray

Writers:

A.I. Bezzerides (screenplay)
A.I. Bezzerides (adaptation) ...

Release Date:

20 June 1952 (France)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Drama

Tagline:

In One Strange Night she met both LOVE ... and MURDER!

Plot:

Hard, withdrawn city cop Jim Wilson roughs up one too many suspects and is sent upstate to help investigate...

Plot Keywords:

Snow | Redemption | Car Accident | Blind Woman | Blindness

Cast

Ida Lupino	...	Mary Malden
Robert Ryan	...	Jim Wilson
Ward Bond	...	Walter Brent
Charles Kemper	...	Pop Daly
Anthony Ross	...	Pete Santos
Ed Begley	...	Capt. Brawley
Ian Wolfe	...	Sheriff Carrey
Sumner Williams	...	Danny Malden
Gus Schilling	...	Lucky
Frank Ferguson	...	Willows
Cleo Moore	...	Myrna Bowers
Olive Carey	...	Mrs. Brent
Richard Irving	...	Bernie Tucker
Patricia Prest	...	Julie Brent (as Pat Prest)

Also Known As:

Dark Highway (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Iceland:16 | UK:A (1951) (cut) | USA:Approved (certificate #14508) | Finland:K-16

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

Ida Lupino directed the film for several days when Nicholas Ray fell ill.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: When Jim Wilson delivers Tucker to the police station and then walks away, shadows of people are cast on him (among them, someone wearing a hat), although in the next shot the street is totally empty.

Quotes:

Jim Wilson: [yelling] So I get thrown off the force! What kind of job is this, anyway? Garbage, that's all we handle: garbage!
Pop Daly: Don't you know? That's the kind of job it is.
Jim Wilson: You've been doing it for sixteen years; you ought to know. How do you do it? How do you live with yourself?
Pop Daly: I don't! I live with other people. When I go home I don't take this stuff with me, I leave it outside. But you! The way you carry it around with you, you must like it!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Act of Violence: Dealing with the Devil (2007) (V)

The Big Thaw

The Nicholas Ray-A.I. Bezzerides On Dangerous Ground is a modestly budgeted film that tries to be different, and succeeds. Tough, brutal city cop Robert Ryan is sent upstate to help solve a murder case, and also to be got rid of, since he seems to be on the verge of mental breakdown. Along the way he runs into a blind woman, the father of the murdered teen, and a few locals. This is the bare bones of the story, such as it is, which on the surface appears mundane. But writer Bezzerides and director Ray were up to other things, and the crime picture trappings of this film are deceptive. The movie is really about that most modern of issues, alienation, and more generally, anomie, the feeling of displacement, namelessness, uselessness, that so many people have in such a fast-paced and mechanized society as ours. Ryan's character is a solitary, apparently celibate cop, who loves no one, and doesn't even like his job. He has a sense of morality, which is maybe what keeps him going. It also, alas, gets him into hot water with his superiors when he punches out one too many suspects, which is the reason for his being sent upstate, to Siberia, as he puts it. Ida Lupino, the blind woman he falls for, is equally isolated, but more serene. Her intuition tells her that Ryan is far more sensitive than he seems (or even understands), and they become close (but not lovers). She represents his good side, the part of him he has repressed all these years. Ward Bond, as the vengeful father of the murder victim, is like a caricature of Ryan, and also skeptical of him as a "city cop", as he puts it.

There's much to recommend in this film. Bernard Hermann's music is excellent. Ray's handling of the chase scenes in the snow, and his evocation of a small rural community, is masterful. The movie seems a little too short to me, for what it's trying to do, and at times spreads itself too thin. It's at various points a crime film, a romance, a mystery, an action picture and a psychological study. The actors, Ryan in particular, are outstanding. No one could play a brooding loser like he could. His emotional outbursts early on feel almost psychotic. Later, mellowed out in the frozen north (irony of ironies!), his vulnerable side begins to emerge, and he becomes sympathetic to us, and eventually empathetic toward the woman. One senses his cluelessness about what's happening in him emotionally, as we, the audience, get it, and he doesn't. He's almost fragile trying to deal with tender feelings, especially since if he messes up or things go wrong he can't very well punch his way out of this one.