Perhaps iconoclastic director Nicholas Ray’s greatest noir, On Dangerous Ground supplies an anguished artfulness that combines the best of his raw auteur poetry with dream factory Hollywood. A cut-from-marble Robert Ryan stars as a cynical city cop who’d rather beat up suspects than ask questions. His violent streak gets him reassigned to a snowy mountain town to assist in the investigation of a little girl’s murder. He soon develops a strong connection with a lonely blind woman (Ida Lupino) who may hold the key to finding the killer. At times both soul-stirringly sweet and relentlessly brutal, this classic features a moody Bernard Herrmann score and was partially directed by Lupino herself.
“Perched between late-’40s noir and mid-’50s crime drama, this is one of the great, forgotten works of the genre.” – Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine
