"On Dangerous Ground" (1952) is another Nicholas Ray movie that makes me wonder about its title (see my review of Lusty Men). It seems to be the sadistic Los Angeles police officer Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) who is on dangerous ground, not so much in the crime-ridden city of urban night as in being on the verge of losing his job for using excessive force on those he questions and/or arrests. The police captain (Ed Begley) who is more concerned about food than what happens to lowlifes tells Jim to lighten up, that he is becoming a "gangster with a badge."

After half an hour of brutal nocturnal policing, Wilson is sent off to aid in a manhunt in the mountains. The lighting changes, and the movie switches from cinema noir to cinema blanc: mostly daylit, rural rather than urban, and with lots of snow (so that the background is white rather than black).

Perhaps policeman Wilson reflected on his increasingly negative view of humankind and only slightly restrained rage on the drive up. Even before a good woman has any chance to redeem him, he seems considerably changed from being in a different milieu. He almost immediately encounters a man more filled with lethal rage than himself: Walter Brent (played by John Ford acting troupe regular Ward Bond), the father of a murdered girl. Even more than Wilson in Los Angeles, Brent wants to combine policeman, judge, jury, and executioner and gun down his daughter's killer.

There is a missed opportunity for Wilson to be tempted to join vigilante justice, but he instead undercuts and foils Brent and aims to bring the boy in rather than let Brent kill him. The newfound professionalism is considerably encouraged by the sister of the hunted boy, a blind woman named Mary Malden, played by Ida Lupino. Wilson does not fall for Mary Malden quite as quickly as he transforms from out-of-control rogue cop to in-control law enforcement professional, and, as I noted, his transformation precedes meeting her (which occurs a third of the way through the movie's running time).

The movie rushes to a conclusion that includes a transformation of Walter Brent and the adherence of one wounded person to another that one expects from Hollywood.

Although the switch from noir to blanc is abrupt, both parts of the movie are strikingly photographed by George E. Diskant (who had also memorably filmed "They Live By Night" for Ray and lensed the noir "Beware, My Lovely" with Lupino and Ryan the same year as "On Dangerous Ground.") Not as acclaimed a cinematographer as Lee Garmes was, Diskant captured some striking snowscapes, chases on snowy roads, and the nightmare LA by night look of the first third of the movie. (Like "Lusty Men," the opening sequence of "On Dangerous Ground" is very striking. Also like it, there is no dialogue.)

The strong visuals are augmented by a moody Bernard Hermann score, adumbrating some of his scores for Alfred Hitchcock movies such as "Vertigo," both in increasing suspense and in extreme romanticism.

Robert Ryan was a master of portraying self-loathing of the kind that is a threat to anyone around (though he was remarkably tame in Ray's "Born to Be Bad"). Although memorable as resentment-filled, homicidal psychotics in such films as "Crossfire," "Beware, My Lovely," "Bad Day at Black Rock," "Act of Violence," and "The Odds Against Tomorrow"), and not looking the romantic leading man, he sometimes "got the girl" in mid-20th-century movies (here and in "Woman on the Beach" in which Charles Bickford substituted for him as the psychotic character). Ryan was very good in both parts of "On Dangerous Ground."

Ward Bond was quite good, too, in one of his more villainous roles (as in "The Young Mr. Lincoln," in which he is also taken down), as are the other police officers (notably Begley, the savvy glutton), and Sumner Wilson as the boy killer being chases.

Ida Lupino (High Sierra, They Drive By Night) seemed somewhat at a loss as to how to play the proudly independent blind woman. She could play tough and she could play vulnerable, but much of screen acting is done with the eyes and she could not use hers as the blind Mary.



Recommended:
Yes