ON DANGEROUS GROUND

 "ON DANGEROUS GROUND" --- (1951) --- 

SYNOPSIS: "Jim Wilson is New York police detective on the edge. Hardened and embittered by his years of dealing with the lowest forms of criminal the city has to offer, Wilson becomes increasingly violent with suspects. For his own good, Wilson's police captain assigns him to a murder investigation in the countryside for a change of scenery. While searching for the killer, Wilson meets the suspect's sister, Mary Malden, a blind woman who might turn his life around."

STARRING: Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Ida Lupino, Ward Bond, Sumner Williams, Cleo Moore, Ian Wolfe, Charles Kemper, Olive Carey and Anthony Ross.

SCREENPLAY: A.I. Bezzerides and Nicholas Ray; Based on "Mad with Much Heart" by Gerald Butler.

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray

CRITICAL RESPONSE:

In 2005 critic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and acting in the drama: "Lupino's gentle character acts to humanize the crime fighter, who has walked on the "dangerous ground" of the city and has never realized before that there could be any other kind of turf until meeting someone as profound and tolerant as Mary."

In 2006 Fernando F. Croce, film critic for Slant magazine, admired the film and wrote: "Perched between late-'40s noir and mid-'50s crime drama, this is one of the great, forgotten works of the genre... Easily mushy, the material achieves a nearly transcendental beauty in the hands of Ray, a poet of anguished expression: The urban harshness of the city is contrasted with the austere snowy countryside for some of the most disconcertingly moving effects in all film noir. Despite the violence and the steady intensity, a remarkably pure film."