A gripping, emotionally touching crime tale, Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground is considered to be an existential melodrama, which disqualifies it from the label of “pure” film noir because of its focus on the regenerative power of love and the fact that its closure suggests an upbeat ending.
A. I. Bezzerides script, based on George’s Butler novel “Mad With Much Heart,” is divided into two distinct parts, the first hard-boiled noir set in the city, the second a lyrical love story in the country, which, for some critics (not me) lessens the film’s overall impact and coherence.
Cornered, Danny flees in panic across the snow-covered terrain, where he accidentally falls from a cliff to his death. Wilson consoles Mary and then plans to head back to New York City and his job. However, realizing that there is nothing meaningful for him in the Big City, Wilson returns to Mary, determined to start together a new life.
Despite a contrived plot, the film is tautly directed by Nicholas Ray, who’s excellent in establishing a mood of despair in the first chapter and then redemption toward the conclusion.
Several critics–purists of film noir–have claimed that On Dangerous Ground is an incoherent film, because only the first half (with it urban setting) qualifies as noir, whereas the second half (set in the country) and its happy ending deviates from the genre’s conventions. The journey taken by Wilson is as much external and physical (from city to country) as it is moral and internal.
“On Dangerous Ground” failed to hit at the box-office (RKO claims to have lost $425,000) and Ray himself was not pleased with the film’s final cut.
It would take another decade and another generation of prominent film critics, such as Andrew Sarris of the “Village Voice,” to reevaluate the film as one of Ray’s more subtle and lyrical films, bearing many of the director’s characteristic stylistic flourishes.