On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Director Nicholas Ray was known for imbuing his thrillers with an almost naive, sad-eyed desperation, and that suits his romantic chase noir, On Dangerous Ground, to a tee. The picture depends upon clichés that were old hat before the talkies, but it transcends them, primarily because we’re more accustomed to encountering them in a romantic melodrama that might more closely resemble Marty than a nastier thriller centering on the hunt for a young girl’s killer. The policeman on the hunt, Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) sees himself through the killer’s sister’s (Ida Lupino) blind eyes and calls himself out on a life that’s been dominated by cynicism and recklessness. We don’t roll our eyes at the second act pathos, nor the Lupino martyr, we’re instead thrown for a loop, wondering what the hell is going on.
It helps that Ray and Ryan are nearly unrivaled in this sort of business. Ray’s pictures aren’t calculated, but raw, almost uncomfortably melancholy and self-conscious. In a Lonely Place is another picture that starts down a familiar path (Hollywood screenwriter, murder, etc.) only to end on a devastating note of miscommunication and un-purged rage. There’s also, of course, Rebel without a Cause, a picture that never annoys from overexposure, if only because it’s authentically unforgettable, a nightmare exploration of the chasm between the generations (just as In a Lonely Place was exploring the un-crossable differences between the genders). On Dangerous Ground has similar conviction in itself, and Wilson ranks as another refreshingly understated, poignant Ray creation. The first three scenes tell us all: one cop hugs his wife, one cop watches TV with his family, Wilson examines pictures of suspects at the dinner table alone. Too bad the picture feels the need, in the first act, to repeatedly remind us of Wilson’s disillusion with needless dialogue, but even this doesn’t irritate, it contributes to the broad, dreamy vibe of the picture, to its big, broken, bleeding heart.
Ray could’ve gotten all of that out of a mediocre actor (and has) but Robert Ryan appears, in all of the pictures I’ve seen at least, to be incapable of giving of a false or boring performance. Ryan can be terrifying even in pictures that aren’t in his league (check his work in the otherwise just ok Crossfire or Clash by Night, both of which can be found in TCM Noirs Vol.2) but when the film manages to be even somewhat up to him the results can be extraordinary, such as The Set-Up, The Naked Spur, the iconic The Wild Bunch, or even here. Ryan, like many of my favorite leading men, has a fascinating, flexible contradiction about himself, he’s scary, badass, childish, noble, buffoonish all, possibly, at once, and can adjust the ingredients seemingly without effort depending upon the part. Wilson is, like the Bogart character in Place, of the not entirely sane school of broken idealists, needing a saint, someone who can in good faith just plain shut up for a while and deal with it, to purify his potentially lethal spiritual toxicity.
On Dangerous Ground follows a traditional three act structure, but the proportions are unusual and further contribute to the surreal discombobulation of the film, while also managing to further dry out the sentimentality. The film is approximately eighty minutes long, thirty of those are devoted to act one, a chase that has little bearing on the official plot (though it organically fleshes out the Wilson character). By minute thirty-five, Wilson has been summoned to another town (to escape problems sprung from his violent practices) to solve a murder. At this point we settle in, expecting twenty minutes or so of fish out of water plotting, the usual no bullshit cop in strange town burlesque, only to have a townsperson spring into a building in the middle of Wilson’s introduction to the prominent townspeople to announce that he’s seen the killer fleeing. Wilson teams up with the father (Ward Bond, very effective) and the remaining forty-five minutes largely constitute this second chase, with the accelerated romance with Lupino, who isn’t, despite first billing, introduced until about minute forty, as a sideline. The film toys with the formula admirably, and embodies what screenwriters preach of underlining character with action.
My only real regret of On Dangerous Ground is that it doesn’t take full advantage of the possible explosions that could be savored from a Robert Ryan-Ida Lupino collaboration. Lupino has proved herself in other roles to be very much Ryan’s equal, but here she’s saddled with an uninteresting male fantasy. Ray exhausts his imagination with the strange pacing, and his empathy with the Wilson character. It’s hard to fault On Dangerous Ground too much though, it’s an original picture with a fantastic lead performance, a clear, hard, amazing visual style, a haunting Bernard Herrman score, and a good as can be expected secondary performance. You don’t roll your eyes at the final kiss, it’s, despite the shortcuts, earned.
★★★½
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
An excellent review. On Dangerous Ground is a pretty stellar film, and twists the “rogue cop” noir that was for a long time before this its own subgenre at this point, giving it clearer, more melancholy empathy and a surprisingly believable love story.
Robert Ryan conveys all of intense menace and sorrowful self-hatred one could ask for. When he confronts his partner in that alley, I always get goosebumps. His yells of “Garbage! That’s all we deal with! Garbage!” could be completely horrid coming from the lips of a lesser actor but Ryan makes you believe that this cop is, yes, “on the edge.”
Apparently, Nicholas Ray was in bad health when making this film and there are many rumors that Ida Lupino, herself a rather successful director (especially for being a woman at this time), more or less took over the production in the final stretch. The “happy ending” between her and Ryan, therefore, is apparently more of their own creation than Ray’s, who was, it seems, more interested in a bleak finale–a bit like, of course, In a Lonely Place. (In the case of In a Lonely Place, Ray changed the original upbeat ending for the dark one laced with, as you say, miscommunication.)
Lupino even said in one interview, I believe, that when it came to the ending of the film, “Robert Ryan and I did it our way, not Nicholas Ray’s way.”
Ray’s trilogy of tough noir, between which he made other films, comprised of They Live by Night (later remade by Robert Altman as Thieves Like Us), In a Lonely Place and this one, On Dangerous Ground, is a very interesting one to look at. Despite the happy ending of this film, which evidently wasn’t of Ray’s imagination, his ostensible outlook with regards to human relations is almost uniformly bleak. This straight-up noir, along with the other two, better serve this impulse than some of his other films, such as Knock on Any Door, an excessively preachy “social issues” melodrama starring Humphrey Bogart as an attorney who tries to save a troubled youth by arguing that his environment produced his criminality.
Bernard Herrman’s score here is tremendous. Like so many other dark films for which he supplied scores, it sets the mood and tone and atmosphere as well as the camera angles and lighting.
The only point of your review with which I must disagree isn’t really about this film at all. That said, I almost fell out of my chair when you implied that Clash by Night is merely “okay.” Don’t tell me Marilyn Monroe’s small presence in that one hurt it for you, aha. Seriously, though, I do understand the basic point–it’s essentially a routine love triangle–but I found it similarly transformed by Fritz Lang’s obsessive and deterministic thematic concerns. I also love the cinematography of that film, and Barbara Stanwyck’s performance, which would probably have not worked nearly as well with any other actress. Anyway, just wanted to give it a brief defense, though if you’re saying it’s “okay” then that’s not bad, at least.
Ryan and Lupino do make a stellar pair onscreen. Their shared presence made a pretty lousy film, Beware, My Lovely, almost work in spite of itself. In that Ryan suffers from almost multiple personality disorder and is a complete psychopath who “blacks out” when he goes bad. It’s worth one viewing.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:51 am
My primary problem with Clash by Night is the ending, which builds and builds and goes nowhere. I’m okay with a picture going nowhere if the picture has perspective on it, but it seems that Stanwyck and Douglas stay together because they’re supposed to stay together, and we’re supposed to see that as a happy ending. I know that applying modern views to older pictures can be short sighted and sloppy, but we’re talking about Fritz Lang and Clifford Odets for Pete’s sake, and about a film that seems to be interested in a more subtle examination of the dynamics between friend, lover and husband. The ending didn’t justify the deliberate pace of the picture.
Clash by Night is also one of those films that doesn’t benefit from having roots in the theatre, nothing gels. Lang’s direction is at odds with the material, and the setting, and the script is just too “written.” It’s a picture worth watching, but nothing fully comes together, though Ryan and Stanwyck are wonderful. Jones is blown out of the water of course, but that would seem to be the point.
But I think your true point, which you are too polite to do any more than imply, is that its glib to write off that ambitious picture as “ok”. And I agree.
And thank you for the perspective on Ray/Lupino, I was not aware of her influence on the film’s ending, though I tend to share Ray’s outlook on such things.
I love Thieves Like Us.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 am
I do see all of your points against Clash by Night. And I agree especially that it is just too “written,” and suffers a good deal from its theatre roots.
I still like Lang’s direction because he seemed to try to give this largely predictable, almost pedestrian love triangle the weight of a domestic noir tragedy. It does kind of give the film a case of dementia praecox, though, but I admire the ambition behind it.
I acknowledge your point about the ending partly sabotaging the narrative, though I do think if you look at it as a kind of romantic twist on Lang’s mutating perceptions of justice, it kind of works on its own in an odd way.
You’re welcome regarding Ray and Lupino. It’s an interesting backstory to discover after seeing the film.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Sadly Chuck I don’t know the film. But it was sheer pleasure to read such a beautifully written, insightful, and nuanced film review by someone who really knows the genre, actors, and director.
I also enjoyed Alexander’s follow up comments.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Thank you sartre. And it seems that I may need to remind and/or warn all of you folks that flattery will in fact get you everywhere.