On Dangerous Ground

Back to the Robert Ryan film festival with On Dangerous Ground, an extremely hard-boiled noir from Nicholas Ray, with a screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides from 1952. Though it's ostensibly a police procedural, it qualifies as a noir because of the conflicted nature of its protagonist.

Ryan stars a big city police detective. He's become so numbed by dealing with the dregs of society that he has lost compassion for almost everyone. His partners, both happily married men, notice his cynical attitude and warn that he will be eaten alive.

The first third of the film concerns Ryan looking for a cop killer, and beating information out of anyone who might know something. He's warned by his captain (Ed Begley), and then shipped out of town into the sticks to work on a murder case. He arrives just in time to get in a chase of the killer, along with the murder victim's father (Ward Bond), who is intent on killing the suspect on site.

The two men track the killer through the snow to an isolated house, where an attractive blind woman (Ida Lupino) lives. Bond is sure she's hiding something, but Ryan treats her more tenderly. It soon comes out that the killer is her brother, and she implores Ryan to promise he won't be killed. Seemingly touched by her strength and vulnerability, Ryan undergoes a change, and after the case is wrapped up he heads back to the city, a different man.

On Dangerous Ground is an oddly structured film, in that the first third is so separate from the last two. I learned that the first third was entirely Ray's creation, and not in the source novel (called Mad With a Heart). Ryan is terrific as a guy who's soul has been tramped down by seeing only the worst in people, while Lupino, is also great as a woman who doesn't seek pity. Bond, seeking nothing but revenge, is like a force of nature.