On Dangerous Ground

On Dangerous Ground is a 1951 film noir directed by Nicholas Ray, starring Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino, and produced by John Houseman. The screenplay was written by A. I. Bezzerides based on the 1945 novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler.

Plot
Police detective Jim Wilson is known for beating information out of suspects and witnesses alike. After Wilson ignores his chief's warnings, he is relegated to a case up-state to cool off. He joins a manhunt pursuing the murderer of a young girl and teams up with Walter Brent, the father of the victim. After they spot a man and chase him, Wilson and Brent get separated from the rest of the manhunt.

They track the suspect to a remote house where they find a blind woman, Mary Malden, by herself in the house. She tells Wilson and Brent that she lives with her younger brother, Danny. Wilson learns that Danny is the killer and that he is mentally disadvantaged. Mary asks Wilson to protect her brother, and he agrees to capture him peacefully. Wilson and Brent spend the night at the house.

At dawn Mary slips out and goes to the storm cellar where Danny is hiding. She tells him that Wilson is a friend and will take him away to be helped. On her way back in Wilson confronts her. While she explains to him that her brother is frightened, Danny slips out of the cellar and runs away.

Wilson trails Danny to a secluded shack and engages him in conversation. While Danny rambles about not wanting to kill the girl, Wilson slowly advances and prepares to seize him. Brent bursts in and the two men brutally struggle. Brent's gun goes off during the struggle and Danny escapes.

The men chase Danny up a rugged stone outcropping. Danny loses his footing and falls to his death. Brent carries his body to the nearest house. Mary arrives after hearing the gunshot. Later, she and Wilson walk back to her home. Wilson indicates he would like to stay with her but she insists he leave. Wilson drives all the way back to the city, remembering what people have said to him. Dissolve to the house and cut to Mary, on the stairs. The bells ring as Wilson comes in the door.They walk towards each other, arms outstretched, then clasp hands and draw each other into a passionate embrace.

Critical response


Contemporary New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther was highly critical, writing, "the story is a shallow, uneven affair, as written by A. I. Bezzerides from Gerald Butler's Mad With Much Heart. The cause of the cop's sadism is only superficially explained, and certainly his happy redemption is easily and romantically achieved. And while a most galling performance of the farmer is given by Ward Bond, Ida Lupino is mawkishly stagey as the blind girl who melts the cop's heart. For all the sincere and shrewd direction and the striking outdoor photography, this R. K. O. melodrama fails to traverse its chosen ground."

In 2005 critic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and acting in the drama: "Robert Ryan's fierce performance is superb, as he's able to convincingly assure us he has a real spiritual awakening; while Lupino's gentle character acts to humanize the crime fighter, who has walked on the "dangerous ground" of the city and has never realized before that there could be any other kind of turf until meeting someone as profound and tolerant as Mary."

In 2006 Fernando F. Croce, film critic for Slant magazine, admired the film and wrote: "Perched between late-'40s noir and mid-'50s crime drama, this is one of the great, forgotten works of the genre... Easily mushy, the material achieves a nearly transcendental beauty in the hands of Ray, a poet of anguished expression: The urban harshness of the city is contrasted with the austere snowy countryside for some of the most disconcertingly moving effects in all film noir. Despite the violence and the steady intensity, a remarkably pure film."

Music
The film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann. His work is strongly evocative of his later, better-known score to Alfred Hitchcock's famed 1958 thriller North by Northwest. He also later reused a sequence that became the opening theme of the 1957 television series Have Gun Will Travel, as well as other fragments of incidental music later adapted for use in the TV show.

Herrmann used an obscure baroque violin-like instrument, the 6 or 7 stringed viola d'amore, which uses extra strings that vibrate with sympathetic resonance to reinforce played notes, to symbolize Mary Malden's isolation and loneliness. The sound of the instrument can be heard much of the time she is on-screen. It was performed by Virginia Majewski, who received a screen credit for her contribution.