Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ray's Neglected Masterpiece, December 17, 2001
Director Nicholas Ray disliked this film's "miracle" ending. Let's hope that judgement didn't apply to the movie as a whole. Because, from jarring commencement to pastoral close, On Dangerous Ground may be the legendary Ray's most beautifully realized film. Reviewer Jarlett has done a good job bringing out the high points, including the absolutely riveting performance of Robert Ryan in the pivotal cop role. Rarely has any screen actor conveyed tortured sensitivity as effectively as Ryan's Jim Wilson. Nor could many directors or actors bring off the emotional final scene so persuasively. Ray was wrong. The ending works. It works because he and Ryan had the artistic sensibility to make it work despite a Hollywood where cynicism is the norm and true romantics are as rare as hen's teeth.Fifty years have passed since the movie's release. In the meantime, cops alienated from society have become an entertainment staple, if not cliche. Ray's early entry transcends the genre because of spiritual overtones that are at once mysterious and profound, and a long way from the hokey variety that usually emanate from studio cynics. Wilson's arc from savage cop to gentle lover is a modern tale of suffering and redemption, as mesmerizing now as at mid-century. Made finally to see his own suppressed humanity through the eyes of a blind girl, Wilson stands at movie's end on the threshhold of becoming the good man he has always been, despite the years of desensitizing police experience. Fortunately, Ryan's convincing expressions, tones, and gestures, have prepared us for this redemptive turn, despite the overt brutality. Unlike such fashionable counterparts as Bullitt or Dirty Harry, hopelessly adrift in their amoral urban worlds, Ray, Ryan, and Lupino pull off that most difficult of challenges -- they make us actually believe in the redemptive power of love and caring as dimensions of real life, and not merely as plot cliches. In fact, the entire film moves toward this resolution, making it one of the few coherent and compelling renderings of romanticsm in movie history. How powerfully Ray evokes the course of Wilson's spiritual journey from gritty urban fleshpots to barren mountain snowscapes (Colorado), all of which accentuate the growing despair of Wilson's inner world, while the early morning scene of Mary (Lupino) ministering to her star-crossed brother Danny reaches near mystical proportions. This may be the only Hollywood prayer scene that did't send me rushing for the aisle. There are so many memorable bits in the film that it must be seen to be appreciated. Don't let the relative obscurity fool you. The collaboration here is a permanent record of those superior talents involved. Were the academy awards truly about artistic achievement, nominations would have gone to Ryan, Ray, and scorer Bernard Hermann for their work. But industry prejudices against no-name films, then as now, remain too strong. Nor could the magic be repeated. As a result of this film, Lupino and Ryan went on to make the suspenseful but unremarkable Beware My Lovely, while Ray and Ryan were again paired in the studio's Flying Leathernecks, a dreary Korean war drama. Nevertheless, this one time, under Ray's unifying vision, they came together to fashion a masterpiece of urban despair and spiritual regeneration that continues to disturb after all these years.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a throwback to Dirty Harry, August 30, 2001
On Dangerous Ground was an esoteric masterpicece, which Nicholas Ray and A.I. Bezzerides adapted from the British novel, Mad With Much Heart. Robert Ryan may have given one of his subtlest portrayals in the film, which was short on dialogue, high on visual expression, and augmented by Bernard Herrmann's dramatic score (he later stated that this was his favorite personal composition). As Detective Jim Wilson, Ryan's character was a noir type with which he was familiar, a man so tormented by what he sees in the line of duty that he is driven to commut brutal acts. Wilson's role delineates the conflict of the story, that of a man turned rancorous and cynical from dealing with the dregs of society. He has become a loner, an essentially good man gone sour, and though his conscience bothers him, he is trapped. Stooping to the level of those he detests, he has incorporated their self-destructiveness into his own actions. One scene, with the blonde, vampish Myrna (Cleo Moore), indicates the extent of his frustrations, as masochism and sexuality are tied together. As Myrna shows Wilson the bruise her boyfriend recently gave her, she directs his hand, holding an unlit cigarette, into her mouth. The music in the background synchronizes with a shot of Wilson turning toward Myrna, who says, "You'll squeeze it out of me with those big strong arms, won't you?" He softly replies, "That's right, sister." The next fade-in shows Wilson slowly descending the dark staircase of her building in deep thought, leaving one to ponder whether he has left Myrna safe or sorry. Another spare, yet graphic, scene depicting Wilson's violent impulses occurs in an eerie film noir setting, appropriately named the Harbor Hotel, a seedy tenement on a one-way street. A stool pidgeon has tipped off Wilson and his partner about a murder suspect, Burney Tucker, and the two cops pay him a visit. Accompanied by the rising crescendo of Herrmann's magnificent score, Wilson loses control of himself and snarls, "I always make you punks talk! Why do you make me do it? Why? Why?" He is on the verge of a total breakdown as he responds to Burney's masochistic entreaty, "Hit me, hit me," by nearly beating him to death. The pangs of conscience that erupt when Wilson returns to his apartment are acted out symbolically. Frowning as he shuts the door and switches on the bare overhead light, Wilson's face contorts into a desolate mask of anger and hopelessness. As he gazes despairingly at the trophy resting on his dresser, it is the sole remnant from his optimistic past. To blot out the world, he jerks down the window shade, walks to the sink, and while a trombone insinuates a somber melody in the background, he is compelled to wash his hands of his recent dirty work. It is an unconscious "undoing" act, but as he anxiously wipes his hands with a towel, the guilt remains. In addition to director Ray's high artistic talent, cinematographer George E. Diskant's expertise in low-key, high contrast lighting situations, and Herrmann's beautiful score, counterpointed the drama as it unfolded. Virginia Majewski's virtuoso viola work perfectly complemented his orchestration. Working within Ray's unconventional story, Ryan and co-star Ida Lupino brought the whole piece together by making their scenes together into intimate conversations. Although their romantic involvement is depicted only briefly in the final frames, their embrace possesses real emotional power. Ryan's predilection for appearing in films dealing with the raw truths of existence sometimes prompted queries about his attraction to the melancholic. He was once asked why he never played comedy roles, and he responded, "I play them as I see them." Author James Kreidl discussed On Dangerous Ground and Ryan's performance, and concurred that he had an affinity for tragedy. Calling the picture "deadly serious and completely cut off from the romantic comedy," Kreidl described Ryan's interpretation as "subdued, controlled, understated - almost expressionistic." Despite being undervalued in 1952, On Dangerous Ground has resurfaced often for study by serious film scholars, and is frequently featured in film retrospectives.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding noir, September 1, 2004
A highly unusual noir that starts off really, really dark and gets...well, sort of better. Robert Ryan is exceptional and genuinely frightening as the tortured and self-torturing violent cop, who encounters the blind sister (Ida Lupino) of a man he's hunting. Ryan's gravity, tension and capacity for savagery are in full whack during the first third of the movie; the scene where he beats up a suspect is scarier than anything by Wes Craven, because we seem to learning something about human beings instead of about film cliches. Lupino is very, very good as the blind woman, a part that could easily have toppled over into sentimentality. (It's worth remembering that the RADA-trained Lupino - actually English, but with an immaculate American accent - was a fine director of tough movies in her own right, and the story goes that she directed some of the scenes in this herself when Nicholas Ray was ill.) The ending is approaching Bresson territory, in this viewer's opinion. A truly poetic movie, a tribute to Ray, Lupino and above all Ryan, a great and harrowing actor who didn't get enough good parts. This was maybe the best he ever had. It's a scandal that the film isn't more widely available.
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