It’s something of a paradox that one of the greatest and most central works of film noir, a genre marked by its dark and often cynical worldview, becomes a kind of ecstatic parable about spiritual epiphany and moral regeneration in the hands of Nicholas Ray. On Dangerous Ground (1951), Ray’s eighth feature, is usually overshadowed by his previous noir classics, They Live by Night (1948, his debut feature) and In a Lonely Place (1950), and while those are certainly two very great, essential films, my own favorite among Ray’s early work is this later, somewhat more underrated masterpiece. At first glance, the film looks like an amalgamation of two very different movies. It opens within a shadowy, deeply corrupt urban underworld of twisted alleys and desperate characters – this is the environment inhabited by Jim Wilson, a violent cop portrayed by Robert Ryan – only to move toward a kind of icy romanticism in its emotionally charged later passages, as Wilson is sent out beyond city limits on a homicide case upstate. (more…)
