Ida Lupino in a nicely expressionist frame from Nicholas Ray’s 1952 On Dangerous Ground, which just played yesterday as part of NYC treasure Film Forum’s Ray retrospective, which is ongoing and essential. If you missed this one, the Warner DVD is easy to find. One of the things I love about the picture is the intensity of all the relations between the characters, particularly that of damaged cop Robert Ryan and gentle, independent blind woman Ida Lupino—they go from zero to sixty in a matter of minutes, not romantically, but then again, it’s not too dissimilar to the alacrity with which Bogart and Grahame begin their affair in In A Lonely Place. I know that when you were making low-budget pictures of durations of ninety minutes or fewer back in the day, it paid to get where you were going quickly, but with Ray you can always sense that there’s more than expediency behind the urgency.
In Godard’s 1965 Pierrot le fou, Ray’s fellow Hollywood renegade Samuel Fuller sums up his definition of cinema with the word “emotion.” A year later, Godard dedicated Made in U.S.A. to Fuller and Ray, for teaching him to respect sound and image. Wim Wenders named one of his early collections of essays and criticism Emotion Pictures. He cast Ray and Fuller to act together in his 1977 The American Friend. (They had never met before, apparently.) And so on…
Much as I relish stories about Lupino and Ryan directing the final scenes themselves while Ray was indisposed– with that excusing a conclusion some find deficient– how could anyone cognizant of Ryan’s brilliant but circumscribed career of lyric psychos and giggling nasties not feel heartbroken at the last gauzy closeups of eyes and hands, as the man just this once finds someone worthy to love? The unmistakable grown-upness Lupino and Ryan always brought even to compromised roles makes this hard-won union cherishable.
Ray was actually okay with the ending of ON DANGEROUS GROUND, contrary to popular views on the film. What he wasn’t okay with was Howard Hughes, in his infinite wisdom, wrecking the structure of his film. The film’s first half is a kind of documentary on police life and it climaxes in the death of that girl and Robert Ryan’s breakdown in that alley to his friend. Well THAT scene was intended to be at the climax of the film. After that it supposed to be the ending of his return to Ida Lupino. But alas, that was not to be.