Rent On Dangerous Ground (1952)

Police Noir. - On Dangerous Ground review by Steve

Nicholas Ray was a director who usually found unconventional perspectives on genre films. On Dangerous Ground is an unusual film noir which centres on an out of control big city policeman Jim Wilson ( the superb Robert Ryan) who is so brutalised by his experiences that he becomes frustrated, isolated and unable to relate to others.

Pressured by his police captain to close the case of a cop killer, but disciplined when he gets results by any means, hated by the public, and tortured by the eternal drip of crime fed over the police radio he becomes consumed by his escalating anger. The detective memorably yells to a slippery suspect: 'Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna talk. I always make you punks talk. Why do you make me do it?'. The only women he meets are sex workers or those who fetishise his violent threat.

Eventually he is sent up state into the Colorado mountains to take over a murder case, which brings him into contact with a blind recluse (Ida Lupino) who lives in a remote house with her learning disabled brother who is suspected of murder. Unlike the cop, because of her disability, Mary Malden is all feeling, but just as isolated as Jim. There is a moment when she asks to touch his hand to better know him which surges with electricity as we feel his emotional numbness. It is a film about his psychological sickness and eventual remission.

 The contrast between the blackness of the city and the blinding whiteness of the country is striking. The percussive score (unusually for the time featuring brass instruments) by Bernard Herrmann is a big strength, and he considered it his best. There is a brilliant script from Al Bezzerides, full of dark poetry. It is also a spiritual film that ends with a the possibility of hope and that's a rarity in film noir.