Cinzas que Queimam

Detective Jim Wilson is a good cop mired in a bad world of hustlers and pimps and crooks. He has a black and white sense of right and wrong, but he's trapped in infinite shades of gray — a garbage handler, as he self-identifies, who spends his days and nights thankfully cleaning up the trash on the mean streets. He's got pencil-pushing bureaucrats breathing down his neck, and every dame who crosses his path has angle. But he gets things done, he rights wrongs, usually by beating bad guys into submission. In other words, he is an archetype for every bad man on a good mission and this movie is a blue print for every renegade copy movie ever made thereafter.

And as is this case in almost every one of those cop movies thereafter, the world is quickly changing around him and in the new world, you can't solve all your problems with your fists — or, as in more modern movies, with a gun. (Side note: apparently things don't change too quickly much because this story line is still alive and well.) After a particularly brutal scene in which the sympathetic, sadistic cop beats a confession out of a craven, seemingly masochistic criminal, he draws the ire of his commanding officer who sends him upstate to a rural area gripped in an icy winter. A girl has been murdered and the locals, especially the father, aim to settle the score. Everything in his gritty, urban background has readied him to dole out some sympathetic justice, but there's just one problem — in the course of the investigation, he meets a dame without an angle: the beautiful, and blind, Mary Malden (played by Ida Lupino).

Her mentally challenged brother is a suspect and Jim and the victim's father are forced wait out the night at Mary's house. For a man who has seen too much and trusts no one, he can't help but fall for the lovely Mary who has can't see anything and is forced to, as she admits, trust everyone.

More modern sensibilities are used to (numbed by?) a direct visual treatment of passion, but the muted approach in this movie heightens the impact. When their hands touch, we are treated to a moment of romantic discovery that surpasses all the heat and energy of the currently more popular bra and pantie clad tussling between love interests.

The movie is shot in a jumpy, jerky way (mumblenoir?) with crackling dialog, adds to the tension, sense of foreboding and drama. And the car chase — sliding along icy roads — was well-executed. For such a short movie (82 minutes), it covers a lot of territory — from the heart of the city to the emptiness of the wilderness, and from cynical resignation and brutality to hope and redemption.

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The lonely and tough Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is an efficient detective that frequently uses excessive violence to resolve his cases and even his partners do not approve his behavior. While chasing two cop killers, he blows the bladder of another suspect during the interrogation to get the information to catch the assassins. He is warned by his chief Captain Brawley (Ed Begley) to cool off, and when he beats another suspect on the street, Brawley sends him "upstate to Siberia" in the cold Westham to calm down and help the locals in a murder case of a girl. When he arrives, he visits the family of the victim, whose father Walter Brent (Ward Bond) is decided to kill the murderer. They chase the man through the snow, and after a car accident, they reach the isolated house of Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman that lives alone in the middle of nowhere with her brother Danny (Sumner Williams) that has mental problem. Brent and Jim are lodged by Mary to spend the night, and Jim is affected by Mary in a process of humanization and redemption.

"On Dangerous Ground"is a simple movie with a tale of loneliness, trust and redemption developed through two totally different characters that have only loneliness in common. Jim Wilson lives in the big city, is brutal, trusts nobody and is in the edge in his career, acting like a gangster wearing a badge. Mary Malden lives in the countryside, is gentle, has to trust everybody and sacrificed her chance to see again to take care of her mentally unstable brother. The process of humanization of Jim Wilson is depicted through his relationship with Mary and is very touching. Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan have great performances under the direction of Nicholas Ray in this credible story. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Cinzas Que Queimam" ("Ashes that Burn")

Note: On 14 January 2017, I saw this film again.

Nicolas Ray who directed a string of good films, most notably In a Lonely Place, Flying Leatjernecks and They live by Night and would become best known for Rebel Without a Cause directed this fine film-noir flick from 1952. He had taken the idea for the story based on the Gerald Butler novel Mad With Much Heart. Ray teamed with Albert Bezzerides for the screenplay who had written They Drive by Night, Desert Fury and Thieves Highway for the screen and would become best known in film for Kiss Me Deadly. He would become better known in television as the creator of the long running western series The Big Valley. Excellent photography in this film from cinematographer George E. Diskant. Robert Ryan is one of Hollywood's most underrated actors and in the staring role of a burnt out city cop on the road to redemption and awakening, turns in yet another great performance. Ida Lupino is another of my favorites and this time around plays a blind woman living alone in rural upstate Mew York. This is a film in two acts that are almost like tow separate films. Part one we find the Ryan character as a violent tough and over the edge cop who once was a popular high school football star and has become burned out in his job and dissatisfied with his lonely small apartment so he hates his job and his life away from work. The first half of the film is mostly night scenes. He is sent by his superiors to cool off in the frozen north and try to help solve a local murder. In the Ward Bond character as the Father of a murdered woman he meets someone even more angry and violent than he is. Bond delivers a strong supporting role performance. Rounding out the fine cast are Ed Begley, Charles Kemper and Anthony Ross. Famed, prolific composer Bernard Hermann provide the musical score. The story might be a little simplistic at times and predictable but it is still a strong film and I would give it an 8.5 out of 10.

'On Dangerous Ground' is a very original and striking movie, one of the most interesting to come out of 1950s Hollywood. The movie is in two halves. The first is urban and sees Robert Ryan play Jim Wilson a brutal but seemingly moral cop who appears to be on the brink of a complete breakdown. His character could well be the toughest cop ever seen on screen until the early 1970s heyday of Dirty Harry and Popeye Doyle,etc. The second half is rural, with Wilson being sent out of the city to investigate the murder of a young girl (shades almost of Stellan Skarsgard in 1997's 'Insomnia'). There he encounters a local blind woman (Ida Lupino), the sister of his number one suspect. The first half is as I said, extremely tough, the second half is ALMOST a mystery (yet it's obvious who the murderer is), and ALMOST a romance (but handled in a very subtle and "unHollywood" way). It's an odd combination but really works because the script lacks cliches, Nicholas "Rebel Without A Cause" Ray's direction is very fresh and inventive, and the acting is first rate. Lupino makes the most of her supporting role, as does Ward Bond ('The Searchers') as the father of the murdered girl, and Sumner Williams as Lupino's disturbed younger brother, but Robert Ryan steals the movie. I'm beginning to regard Ryan as one of the most underrated screen actors of all time. Just watch him in this, the boxing classic 'The Set-Up', 'Crossfire', 'Bad Day At Black Rock', and of course, 'The Wild Bunch' and see what I mean. 'On Dangerous Ground' deserves a much larger audience. Highly recommended.

Ignored at the time of it's release and still criminally underrated, On Dangerous Ground is a masterpiece from director Nicholas Ray, and maybe his best film {yes, better than Rebel Without A Cause}, a powerful yet poignant study of loneliness, urban alienation and finally redemption. It's both tough and tender, both thrilling and thoughtful, both sad and uplifting. In fact, the film itself is comprised of two halves, and both are simply brilliantly handled.

The first half is classic hard boiled film noir. Set almost entirely at night, Robert Ryan's policeman patrols the streets, getting so sickened by the filth he deals with that he has become dehumanised. As he deals with the gangsters ,the tramps and the thieves, the film has an almost documentary style, but it's also an extremely powerful study of a man caught in limbo, perhaps not that many stages away from Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle.

By contrast, the second half takes place mainly in daylight and forgoes the forbidding city scapes for snowy countryside. Ray gives us two terrific outdoor chase sequences, but just as striking are the beautifully written and played scenes between Ryan and the blind Ida Lupino, this tentative almost-romance between two lonely souls being so incredibly poignant. The last reel is somewhat rushed, due partially to pre-release cutting, and maybe the happy ending is un realistic. However, the final embrace has a tremendous sense of release.

Ryan superbly portrays his character's sickness and gradual melting while the gorgeous Ida Lupino has never looked more vulnerable. Bernard Herrmann's score is one of his best ever, ranging from thrilling hunt music for the chase scenes to music of almost unbearable beauty for Lupino. The score alone is a work of art ,but so is this wonderfully compact {at around 80 mins!}and excellent film.