Silver Screen Standards: On Dangerous Ground (1951)
Deep frost permeates Nicholas Ray’s 1951 noir classic, On Dangerous Ground, freezing both the soul of its protagonist and the stark winter landscape that dominates the second half of the film. Both constitute the “dangerous ground” of the title, with Robert Ryan slipping into violence as an urban cop whose disillusionment has chipped away his humanity until the next suspect he meets might well end up on the cold slab of the morgue. It’s a story with two very distinct parts, the first a gritty noir in a nighttime world of cops, crooks, and dark alleys, and the second a snowy Western where the open white space holds dangers of its own but also the opportunity for self-knowledge and even redemption. There are certainly aspects of On Dangerous Ground that don’t play as well today as they might have in the 1950s, particularly where police violence is concerned, but the movie still has a lot to recommend it, including lead performances by Ryan and Ida Lupino, striking cinematography in the snowy landscapes, and a noteworthy – and frequently familiar – score by Bernard Herrmann.
When jaded city cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) vents his frustrations with the job by roughing up a series of suspects, his boss sends him to cool off out in the country, where the murder of a young girl has rocked the small community and sent her grieving father, Walter Brent (Ward Bond), in search of retribution. On the trail of their main suspect, the pair of men find Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who wants to protect her mentally unstable younger brother (Sumner Williams) but also feels a powerful sympathy for Jim. As he watches both Walter and Mary confront their own suffering and grief, Jim begins to reclaim his ability to care about other people, even those on the wrong side of the law.
The first half of the film presents us with an anti-hero so dark and troubled that it’s hard to imagine redemption as an option. Ryan’s hard features sell us on Jim’s bitterness even before we see him lay hands on a suspect, but his brutality is shocking, even by the standards of the 1950s. Jim’s partners, Pete (Anthony Ross) and Pop (Charles Kemper) are also disturbed by his behavior; they are both married and have lives outside their jobs to keep them in touch with their own humanity, while Jim lives alone in a miserable one room apartment. Jim’s boss, Captain Brawley (Ed Begley), warns him that his violent outbursts cannot be allowed to continue, although Jim still seems surprised when he’s banished to “Siberia” after his abuse puts one suspect in the hospital. There’s no sense of Jim being invested in ideals like justice or fairness; he’s just another creature of the night, a predator whose prey happen to be wanted men. The city he prowls is filled with teenage prostitutes, crooks, and murderers, but even the ordinary citizens sense his tarnished nature and recoil from him. “Cops have no friends,” Jim opines. “Nobody likes a cop.” Thanks to his actions, it’s easy to see why.
Fortunately for Jim, the plot casts him out of the city’s dark heart and into the dazzling whiteness of a snow-covered countryside, where he encounters people who force him to rethink his perspective. Grief has hardened into bloodthirst in Walter Brent, who mirrors the kind of man Jim has also become but realizes he cannot continue to be. Walter intends to kill the suspect on sight, forcing Jim to become the one who practices restraint. Walter even attempts to strike Mary because he thinks she’s only pretending to be blind, and Jim must step in to protect her. If Walter offers Jim a grim reflection of the man he is now, Mary offers him a glimpse of the man he could become, someone who both gives and receives much-needed love in a cold, lonely world. Mary might be too much of a noble martyr to be wholly credible (why would she think allowing herself to go blind is a better option when it comes to caring for the unpredictable Danny?), but Ida Lupino invests the character with depth and interest through her performance. Even Danny, who only appears briefly, has a profound impact on Jim. The sea change in Jim’s perspective might be hurried in such a short film, where most of the action takes place within 24 hours, but the story in many ways resembles A Christmas Carol without the supernatural elements, and in Dickens’ tale the spirits also accomplish their aims with Scrooge very quickly. It would be nice to see more of Jim’s redemption arc so we feel that he really deserves his second chance; the theme of the picture, however, is the importance of forgiveness and sympathy even to those who don’t seem to deserve them, so we have to choose to believe that Jim will live up to the opportunity extended to him.
Director Nicholas Ray is remembered for his excellent contributions to classic noir, including They Live by Night (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), and Johnny Guitar (1954), although his crowning achievement is the coming-of-age drama, Rebel without a Cause (1955). Ida Lupino played ingenues in her early career but eventually found her way into grittier roles more worthy of her talent, with some of my favorites being They Drive by Night (1940) and Ladies in Retirement (1941). Robert Ryan was equally at home in both Westerns and noir and often played villains, but I particularly admire his performance as the sympathetic boxer in The Set-Up (1949). You can see both Lupino and Ryan in Beware, My Lovely (1952), and Ray also directs Ryan in Born to be Bad (1950), The Racket (1951), and Flying Leathernecks (1951). The Western ambience in the second half of On Dangerous Ground is enhanced by the presence of genre regular Ward Bond, of course, but also by Olive Carey as Walter Brent’s wife and Frank Ferguson as Mr. Willows.
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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub
Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.
Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.
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