Dangerous Ground

A terse opening five minutes, largely without dialogue, depicting the rounding up of a criminal gang sets the mood for an atmospheric crime drama enhanced by superb photography by Cyril Bristow.

A remarkable amount of the initial footage is devoted to an adulterous relationship. Since you know this will be punished severely you can guess where this is all leading; and as a whole the tone is considerably more serious than one is accustomed to in a quota quickie.

I absolutely adore old British pictures and particularly the films of the 30's, 40's and 50's. This one came as something of a surprise, more so in that I had never seen it before. I expected something that would be extremely creaky and rather dull, but on the contrary I found it to be quaintly dated, nicely done and delightfully corny in the nicest possible way! (Entertainingly amusing, rather than ridiculously laughable.)

It is extremely atmospheric and when the sound is at it's best, the dialogue is superbly recorded. The male voices particularly have great presence and a surprising degree of base level in this Variable Density track. The script is good too and not afraid to be tongue in cheek when required, which gives it an extra lift.

Overall however, the recording quality does vary considerably and the picture has a very wide dynamic range, which presumably depended to some degree on where the microphones were situated in the long shots and the scenes with multiple actors in them, which were rather quiet and 'distant'.

Overall however, this is a well done crime picture which has many elements, no loose ends and an absorbingly engaging quality, with eerie lighting, performances which are convincing and not too stilted like a great many other pictures of the same period, and a nice mystery element to it.

The ending is perhaps just a shade obvious and slightly disappointing, but overall, compulsive viewing. The film is particularly nicely edited, but then it would be, since the film editor was David Lean and he was very good at his craft. All in all a nice little discovery for anyone that is into this sort of thing. I may in retrospect have overdone the voting, but I gave it 6 out of 10 for it's high level of overall quality, despite the constraints of it's early vintage.

An insurance investigator is killed. His partner, Jack Raine, calls on his widow and daughter from his previous matter to discuss the matter and his intention to make sure the head of the criminal syndicate that did him in doesn't get away with it.

This movie makes an elementary error in pacing: it starts with a tension-filled episode of a meeting of the crooks, and then cuts to the mourning household with Raine, the widow (played by Joyce Kennedy), her stepdaughter (played by Kathleen Kelly), the butler (Gordon Begg), and Malcolm Keen, who makes love to Miss Kennedy in hushed tones, while Raine and Miss Kelly flirt in funereal tones.

It's clear from the structure that one of them in the murderer, but instead of much of interest happening, we get twenty-five minutes of dull, self-deprecatory banter in evening clothes that makes it hard to maintain interest. By the time anything starts to happen, everything is explained in advance. And yet the entire thing takes only 63 minutes. Perhaps it might have taken longer, but it's an early editing job by David Lean. At its unedited length, it would undoubtedly have been even duller.

DANGEROUS GROUND is a particularly uninspiring British crime film of the 1930s. I note the term 'quota quickie' is brought out fairly quickly on this site as a term of insult but that's definitely what this movie feels like as it has no material that stands out or indeed hasn't been seen elsewhere. The most interesting part of the production are the opening scenes which make this look like an American gangster film but things soon move to the more typical country pile settings with a rich aristocratic family making up the cast of characters.

Basically, somebody in the house is a master criminal hiding out from the law, and an insurance man is on the case. There's a lot of talk in this one and not much action, and to make things worse it's a very static film in term of camera movement and shots; there's little in the way of variety to break up what quickly becomes tedious. David Lean worked on this film as editor but you wouldn't know it, while main star Malcolm Keen was the father of Geoffrey. DANGEROUS GROUND is a time waster whichever way you look at it.

Even the editorially skills of David Lean cannot make the proverbial silk purse out of a sows ear.This is a bog standard quota quickie.So this means that it is filmed without close ups.So if there is a group they are grouped so that they can all speak their lines without the camera moving.This makes for a rather static film,which seems more like a filmed play.This is a thriller but there is not a great deal of action or suspense.The acting and direction are equally undistinguished.The leading character is played by Malcolm Keen father of Geoffrey Keen.it can be said without fear of contradiction that all concerned would go on to much more distinguished and worthwhile enterprises in the no too distant future.