On Dangerous Ground (1951)

On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951) Big city detective Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is a one-man "good cop/bad cop" shake-down. Of all the detectives on his night-time beat, he's the one who takes the work home, studying mug-shots, knowing the rules, keeping his nose clean.

One little problem—he's taking his work home with him. The job's weighing on him, poisoning his mind. All he sees are the mean city-streets, and the nighthawks who scurry through it. It's being noticed. "All we ever see is crooks, murderers, wino's, stoolies, dames—all with an angle." muses his new partner. "You get so you think everybody's like that. 'Til you find out different, it's kind of a lonely life...Jim just takes it harder than the rest of us." There's been a cop-killing recently—Wilson's partner, in fact—and it's gone unsolved. He knows why: "Everybody hates cops," he tells his captain (Ed Begley). "On either side of the law."

He's not helping the image: When a guy running down the street matches the description of a robbery suspect, he gets pulled over, gets cleared, he starts squawking about "Dumb cops" and Wilson's ready to take a poke at him before he gets held back by his partners; and when he finds an associate of the more likely cop-killers, he beats the information out of him. "Why do you make me do it?" he yells at the guy before laying into him. "You're know you're gonna talk. I always make you punks talk! Why do you make me DO it?"

Well, now the guy's got a ruptured bladder from the beating and Wilson's captain has an ulcer from another civil suit, not Wilson's first. And he's not showing any remorse or any inclination to change. He gets results. He's got a medal. "For being judge, jury and executioner?" grumps his captain. "Make up your mind to be a cop. Not a gangster with a badge." 

So, Wilson gets sent up-state for awhile—"Siberia" he calls it—as there's been a murder of a little girl up there. He needs the space. He needs to get out of the city. And, although he doesn't suspect it, he's going to be particularly well-suited for the job, as he has no pity. And he'll find himself in the odd position of not being the worst thing that could happen.

Once he gets to the county, he finds a scared populace with a mob mentality. Visiting the Brent family, whose daughter is dead, he finds few leads as the girl's sister is too traumatized to offer any help identifying the killer. And the victim's father, Walter Brent (Ward Bond, playing the role with all the reactionary fervor natural to the actor) finds the detective's presence and questions just a delay to vigilante action: "No trial by jury. No sob-sisters. I'm just gonna empty my gun into his belly. Anybody try to stop me'll get the same thing." Up there, Wilson actually finds himself a voice of reason.

A snowy chase into the back-country causes both cars to spin out and ditch. And Brent and Wilson must continue the pursuit on foot following tracks in the snow. The way leads to a cabin with only one light on. The inhabitant is Mary Malden (Ida Lupino) who welcomes the men into her house and it's a few minutes before Wilson realizes that Mary is blind and has been for some years. Brent is suspicious and goes out to track Danny, leaving Wilson and Mary alone in the cabin, where she gets tea for the two of them. Wilson just observes.

She notes this, suspecting she's not the first blind person he's known. When Wilson asks why, she says he didn't offer her help and there's no pity in his voice. She asks him what it's like to be a cop, and he says you get to where you don't trust anybody.

"You're lucky," she says. "You don't have to trust anyone. I do. I have to trust everybody."

For Wilson, out of his element and having to deal with nuance and honesty, the case becomes one of negotiation, between two individuals—without angles—who either want the culprit alive or the culprit dead, and his understanding the cases for both sides. The extremes must coalesce if justice must be served...if only one can trust.

On Dangerous Ground (it's original title was "Mad With Much Heart", as per the original novel by Gerald Butler) boasts a great script by director Ray and A.I. Bezzerides** (one of the better noir screenwriters), which was originally a three-act structure, with the upstate scenes bracketed by the city action with a downbeat ending. But Howard Hughes, in charge of RKO at the time, was in a tinkering mood, and moved the last episode, earlier in the picture, so any inspiring words have to be recalled in echoed memory, rather than told to him for the first time, making Ryan's Wilson a cop who doesn't listen too good. And a tacked-on happy ending doesn't help things as far as a consistent tone, which makes it tough for both Lupino and Ryan, who does some mighty subtle work on a character who doesn't go in for subtle. The film already treads the noir landscape of cynicism, paranoia and naive romanticism, but, in the ecstatic ending, it doesn't remain true to the characters and their core souls.

The film also has a great score by Bernard Herrmann which gives a hastily shot scramble up a bunch of rocks that are standing in for a mountain a sense of urgency and largeness; it foreshadows his work on North By Northwest. It elevates the film several notches above its roots and has the verve of another movie entirely.

Just the music from the chase scene On Dangerous Ground

** Bezzerides wrote the scripts for Thieves Highway and Kiss Me Deadly.