On Dangerous Ground (1951): Nicholas Ray’s Lyrical Film Noir? Starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan

The protagonist is a tough, troubled cop named Jim Wilson (well played by Robert Ryan), who has been brutalized by his job of cleaning up the “human garbage” in New York City; he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He lives alone in a shabby apartment and has no social interaction, except with his peers. Wilson’s job and life have made him bitter, angry, and violent. He is so filled with hate that he lets his fists speak for him when interrogating criminal suspect.

To avoid having to suspend him, his boos, Captain Brawley (Ed Begley) sends Wilson to the country to help investigate a rural killing by a disturbed teenager, Danny Malden (Sumner Williams). There, Wilson is confronted with Walter Brent (Ward Bond), an irate, vengeance-seeking father, obsessed with catching the killer of his young daughter.  There’s a parallel between the two men, who though different, both are brutes, motivated by hatred.

In the country, Wilson also meets Danny’s blind sister, Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), who pleads Wilson not to harm her brother and prevent him from falling into Bond’s hands. Through Mary’s compassionate view of the world, Wilson becomes more humane and understanding, realizing that the youth charged with the crime is mentally disturbed. He tracks the youth (Williams) across vast tracts of snow.

Cornered, Danny flees in panic across the snow-covered terrain, where he accidentally falls from a cliff to his death. Wilson consoles Mary and then plans to head back to New York City and his job. However, realizing that there is nothing meaningful for him in the Big City, Wilson returns to Mary, determined to start together a new life.

Despite a contrived plot, the film is tautly directed by Nicholas Ray, who’s excellent in establishing a mood of despair in the first chapter and then redemption toward the conclusion.

Several critics–purists of film noir–have claimed that On Dangerous Ground is an incoherent film, because only the first half (with it urban setting) qualifies as noir, whereas the second half (set in the country) and its happy ending deviates from the genre’s conventions.  The journey taken by Wilson is as much external and physical (from city to country) as it is moral and internal.

The score was composed by Bernard Herrmann, whose work is strongly evocative of his later, better-known score to  Hitchcock‘s romantic thriller North by Northwest. He later reused a sequence that became the opening theme of the 1957 TV series Have Gun Will Travel, as well as other fragments of incidental music later adapted for use in the TV show.

Herrmann wanted to use an obscure baroque instrument, the viola d’amore, to symbolize Mary Malden’s isolation and loneliness. The sound of the instrument can be heard while she is on-screen.

On Dangerous Ground failed at the box-office (RKO claims to have lost $425,000) and Ray himself was not pleased with the final cut.

It would take another decade and another generation of prominent film critics, such as Andrew Sarris of the “Village Voice,” to reevaluate the film.  At present, it is deemed to be one of Ray’s more subtle and lyrical films, bearing many of the director’s characteristic stylistic flourishes.

Cast

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

Credits:

Directed by Nicholas Ray; Ida Lupino (uncredited)
Screenplay by A. I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray, based on Mad with Much Heart, 1945 novel by Gerald Butler
Produced by John Houseman
Cinematography George E. Diskant
Edited by Roland Gross
Music by Bernard Herrmann
Distributed by RKO Pictures

Release date: December 17, 1951 (US)

Running time: 82 minutes