I still see those dark figures outlined against a bleak sky and snowy terrain, Ryan in his improbable city clothes and hat, plus Bond in his outdoor hunting gear. Only it's not deer they're chasing. Instead, the boy is climbing ever higher and higher above them. But that's only one arresting visual in a film full of gripping visuals, and taut emotions. In my 60-some years of movie addiction, this is one of the most memorable and thought provoking. From jittery urban opening to serene pastoral close, it's perhaps the most moving tale of humane redemption I've seen.And who better to play hardened city cop Wilson than the great Robert Ryan. Those beady black eyes are unforgiving whether smacking around a closed mouth hooker (Moore) or thumping on a masochistic thug (Irving). Maybe he's just doing his job, then again, maybe he's come to enjoy it. Whichever, he's one tough cop who's in trouble with the higher-ups for his too often brutal methods. But then, all he sees, as he grimly observes, are cheaters, criminals and low-lifes. Worse, the people he theoretically protects use the word 'cop' like it was a curse word. So, who wouldn't encase himself in reptilian skin in order deal with that world. But unlike his cop partners, who return home to a wife and family, Wilson returns only to athletic trophies that have long since lost meaning. In short, he's thoroughly alienated from others, whether he realizes it or not.Those city street scenes are grippingly staged in true noir fashion, underscoring the twilight world Wilson inhabits. The way director Ray films complements Wilson's predicament perfectly. And when the camera cuts away from the violence, we are almost made to feel the agony that follows.Note how Ray and co. use the many road shots to advance the story. Once Wilson's sent north to 'Siberia' (Colorado) as punishment, he travels inwardly into a different world of snowy mountains and open spaces. Still, he carries the city and his job with him. Only now, his assignment is specific: help catch the killer of a young girl, now fleeing across the snowscapes. Too bad Brent (Bond), the dead girl's dad, is no help. He snarls out 'city cop' like it's a curse word, just what Wilson needs. On the trail, the suspect's tracks lead to a cabin in the snowy wilderness, where it seems a strange woman lives. Note the warm fireplace when they enter, a promising relief from the alienating outdoors.This is a part tailor made for the soulful Lupino as Mary (note the name), who's blind and lives with her brother. But he's gone visiting, so she says. Betraying his deeply buried sensitivity, Wilson soon discerns her handicap though she says nothing about it. The uncaring Brent, however, storms about the house, intent only on finding his daughter's killer. In fact, Wilson must now confront someone more intense than himself; in short, Brent amounts to a rural version of the brutal Wilson, the city cop. And so begins the process of sensitizing Wilson to his own excesses and the needs of others. Lupino manages to keep her blind girl part from becoming too sticky. Director Ray has positioned cues about the house that help Mary navigate the surroundings, like the hanging twigs she touches in the fireplace room. As a result, we get the impression she can take care of herself despite the handicap. Still, she must now deal with an enraged Brent and a purposeful Wilson who've suddenly invaded her little world.The hardened city cop is now in a dilemma. It looks like Mary is hiding her brother, who in fact is the killer. At the same time, he wants to protect her from the overbearing Brent. This amounts to a new role for him, one that he has perhaps never experienced. In a sense, he has begun to perceive Mary's predicament through her handicapped eyes instead of his own. For he himself has been blind to others in a figurative way. But now he's learning there are other ways of seeing besides the visual.That scene of Mary opening the cellar door at dawn is a powerful one. Danny (Williams), her brother, cringes in shadow while behind her shines the newborn sun. If only she could convince him to go with Wilson, Danny would be safe. It's a near-religious moment, religious in a good sense that doesn't exaggerate. And when Wilson throws away Brent's rifle before he can possibly shoot Danny, we know the bad cop has at last been left behind. Still, it's surprising that once the conflict with Danny is over, Mary doesn't just fall into Wilson's now caring arms. But she's had her own little world too long to share it with a relative stranger. So they part for their separate worlds. Mary, riddled with grief; Wilson grappling with the changes as he travels the road back to the city. But this is not the end.Apparently Ray disliked the actual ending, saying he didn't believe in miracles. But the ending is not just superbly touching, but also quite appropriate. For both Mary and the city cop have managed to overcome the isolated worlds they too long dwelt in. To me, the movie is one of the grittiest, most moving, tales of redemption I've been lucky enough to catch.The production amounts to a happy collaboration among Hollywood's most talented movie makers— from producer Houseman (what would the movie be like without the expense of those real Colorado mountains?), to director Ray (with him, you don't just see the screen images, you feel them), to composer Herrmann (this he says is his best score and that includes the many with Hitchcock), to, of course, the luminescent pairing of Lupino and Ryan.Anyway, my words are only words. If you haven't seen the movie, please do. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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.

I have read some reviews about this film and how Nicholas Ray did not care for "The Happy Ending" that RKO forced upon him. This was one case where the studio was right. Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) was a tough loner cop along the lines of "Dirty Harry" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), or Jack Murphy (Charles Bronson) in "Murphy's Law", who was very destructive towards others and even himself, who simply did not care about the "Constitutional Rights" of criminal suspects, and would not hesitate to beat them up (Although Miranda v Arizona did not become the Law for over a decade later). Spoilers: Wilson is sent upstate to investigate the murder of Julie Brent(Patricia Prest) It was really to to get him away from the complaints about his tactics by his boss Capt. Brawley (Ed Begley). There he meets Mary Malden (Ida Lupino) a very sweet woman who is legally blind (Although an operation can restore her sight, but she keeps putting it off because of her brother Danny (Sumner Williams), a developmentally challenged adult). Danny, who is Mary's lifeline to the world, is the killer of Julie, and he is hunted down by Wilson and Julie's father Walter (An extremely angry and obsessed Ward Bond). Danny is eventually killed in an accident, Wilson leaves and Mary will have to fend for herself. However, Wilson realizes that he needs Mary every bit as she needs him and goes back and gets her, and she will be able to get the operation she needs. The themes to this film were loneliness and blindness: Wilson is blind to things such as love and compassion, just as much as Mary is blind to things around her, and both were on the path to destruction (Wilson by harming others and (or) himself, and Mary by having no one get basic things like food and fuel (It was a snowbound area she was in)), and both were lonely in their lives, and both depended on an unsavory element to survive: Wilson with the criminals and Mary with her psychotic brother. But by bringing Mary back with him (The scene of him driving and thinking about Mary was particularly effective), they both had the opportunity to find the things they were missing in their lives. This last part is where RKO got it right: By giving Wilson the chance for redemption, Mary is able to win as well. Will it be a happily ever after ending like a fairy tale? Not at all (Mary still has to deal with the death of her brother, and Wilson still has to deal with the criminals he encounters everyday). But it is an ending where you feel good that there is hope for Jim and Mary, while not thinking it is totally unrealistic. It is a noir classic. 10/10 stars.

Film-noir was a common genre for Nicholas Ray and he had directed several of them, one of which is Humphrey Bogart's career's highlights, In a Lonely Place (1950). Ray is best known for the James Dean classic Rebel without a Cause and the ones familiar with his early film-noirs can see the continuity of noir in it. There's a lot of same kind of sentimentality in On Dangerous Ground that was in 'In a Lonely Place'. It's a film with heart and a non-traditional noir. A hard city cop Jim Wilson isn't afraid of using his fists when the flow of information runs slow. After getting many remarks from his boss, he gets sent to a small town village 70 miles up north. This gives the audience a chance to follow an exciting film-noir story in a different milieu. There in snowy roads and mountains Wilson has to help the local police to solve a murder of a teenage girl. Wilson starts the chase with an aggressive man, who is the father of the murdered girl. As they get going Wilson becomes acquainted with a blind woman, who seems to be having her fingers in the case.Private eyes, desperate men and dangerous women were the common clichés of film-noir. The character of Jim Wilson is played by the film-noir tough guy Robert Ryan, and he is far from a conventional film-noir character. He's a hard-boiled cop, who has been working for the police for 11 years. In his job he sees all kinds of dirty stuff; murder, betrayal, ruthlessness and disregard. All this has made him very cynic, which prepares this character for a good old film-noir. Because just as ruthlessness and moral complexity so is cynicism a hallmark of film-noir. When Jim Wilson gets sent to the small town, he sees himself in the raging father of the murdered girl. For the first time he starts thinking about himself. The woman he later on becomes acquainted with Mary Malden (Ida Lupino "High Sierra") manages to make him think about the bottom loneliness in himself, which he hadn't been thinking that much before. "The people who are around people are sometimes the loneliest." On Dangerous Ground isn't an intelligent study of loneliness, but it does build a fine character. And the sentimentality it exudes offers a nice change from other films of the genre.On Dangerous Ground is a traditional film-noir in an unlikely milieu. It's part of the post-noir 'movement' in the 1950's, filled with disillusions and Cold War paranoia, of which this isn't the best example but for the ones interested in it I'd recommend Kiss Me Deadly (1956). The score of On Dangerous Ground was composed by Bernard Herrman, who is best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock but he also composed scores for films by Francois Truffaut, Robert Wise and Orson Welles. His music is one of the reasons, which tops the ranking of this film. Herrman has an incredibly talented understanding for musical score and the way he uses stringed instruments to build up tension is marvelous. On Dangerous Ground is a film-noir set in snowy conditions. It holds the interest of its viewer till the last minute and in the end it builds a mature picture of a lonely man, who learns that cynicism won't carry you far.