On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Certainly a classic noir but an odd one. It has the personal introspective digging and bits of romance that director Nicholas Ray is so good at. And it has the struggling urban man with a weight that seems unbearable, at odds with even his best friends. It's filmed really well, by a new talent who later moved to television, George Diskant, and it has a score by none other than Bernard Herrmann. Yes, this movie has all the drippings of a classic. It even daringly mixes up heavy urban society and a raw rural mountain existence in basically two halves to the movie, much like the spectacular "Out of the Past."
Nothing goes terribly wrong here, but the story just doesn't quite hold water. At first it's okay that we don't know quite what the main point is, and where our sympathies are meant to lie. But eventually there is a diffusion that gets in the way. This seems like a Ray strategy. Most of his films, the famous ones I've seen, tend to do this in a magical way. They start out with one thing and end up doing another. (The two main ones that are in many top ten lists from this era are "They Live by Night" and "In a Lonely Place.")
Robert Ryan is certainly the star, even if Ida Lupino gets first billing--she is only in the second half of the film. Ryan's classic brooding evilness never reaches the sympathetic or pathetic levels we might expect of him, but he's supposed to be a tender guy under it all, waiting for someone or something to turn that on. Lupino plays a blind woman (this becomes apparent right away to the viewer but for some reason not to the characters), and of course we sympathize with here. She is strong and kind and wise. And she needs someone.
It seems that Ryan is too caught up in his inner turmoil to quiet make it work, however, and he ends up being just a great cop by the end. There is a clash of cultures that is a slightly corny--the city slicker in the country, and so on. And there is the mingling of the two personalities, which lacks some kind of inner magic. (You might say the same in "In a Lonely Place" but it seems more an intentional ploy there.)
There is also the problem of the basic crime aspects of the plot. We aren't meant to care too much about that, but it takes up much of the screen time and we need to make it make sense. It's a little compacted and clumsy for all its inner angst. The blind woman's little brother is mentally disturbed--and there's even an implication she skipped out on surgery for her eyes because of needing to care for him. But things have spun out of control, and she can't do much about it any more.
See this? Well, absolutely if you like the actors, the director, or noirs in general. It fits into the pack well, and has aspects that are moving and well done. That it doesn't gel into a masterpiece is aggravating because the material is really terrific at its core--a man is fighting for his emotional survival, and seems to stumble on a solution in the least likely way. Beautiful.
Certainly a classic noir but an odd one. It has the personal introspective digging and bits of romance that director Nicholas Ray is so good at. And it has the struggling urban man with a weight that seems unbearable, at odds with even his best friends. It's filmed really well, by a new talent who later moved to television, George Diskant, and it has a score by none other than Bernard Herrmann. Yes, this movie has all the drippings of a classic. It even daringly mixes up heavy urban society and a raw rural mountain existence in basically two halves to the movie, much like the spectacular "Out of the Past."
Nothing goes terribly wrong here, but the story just doesn't quite hold water. At first it's okay that we don't know quite what the main point is, and where our sympathies are meant to lie. But eventually there is a diffusion that gets in the way. This seems like a Ray strategy. Most of his films, the famous ones I've seen, tend to do this in a magical way. They start out with one thing and end up doing another. (The two main ones that are in many top ten lists from this era are "They Live by Night" and "In a Lonely Place.")
Robert Ryan is certainly the star, even if Ida Lupino gets first billing--she is only in the second half of the film. Ryan's classic brooding evilness never reaches the sympathetic or pathetic levels we might expect of him, but he's supposed to be a tender guy under it all, waiting for someone or something to turn that on. Lupino plays a blind woman (this becomes apparent right away to the viewer but for some reason not to the characters), and of course we sympathize with here. She is strong and kind and wise. And she needs someone.
It seems that Ryan is too caught up in his inner turmoil to quiet make it work, however, and he ends up being just a great cop by the end. There is a clash of cultures that is a slightly corny--the city slicker in the country, and so on. And there is the mingling of the two personalities, which lacks some kind of inner magic. (You might say the same in "In a Lonely Place" but it seems more an intentional ploy there.)
There is also the problem of the basic crime aspects of the plot. We aren't meant to care too much about that, but it takes up much of the screen time and we need to make it make sense. It's a little compacted and clumsy for all its inner angst. The blind woman's little brother is mentally disturbed--and there's even an implication she skipped out on surgery for her eyes because of needing to care for him. But things have spun out of control, and she can't do much about it any more.
See this? Well, absolutely if you like the actors, the director, or noirs in general. It fits into the pack well, and has aspects that are moving and well done. That it doesn't gel into a masterpiece is aggravating because the material is really terrific at its core--a man is fighting for his emotional survival, and seems to stumble on a solution in the least likely way. Beautiful.