On Dangerous Ground (1951)

“Why do you make me do it?” New York cop Jim Wilson asks the hoodlum he’s about to smash senseless. Jim has seen it all on the city’s shadowy streets: killers, thugs, pimps, sadists. And the experience has cost him his soul. Ironically, his redemption may come in his next case, a brutal murder that brings him into the open sky and white light of the countryside…and into the arms of a beautiful blind woman. Directed with intensity by Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, They Live by Night) and featuring a haunting score by Bernard Herrmann (Psycho), On Dangerous Ground is a taut, rapid-paced manhunt with two fine stars at its tortured heart. Noir master Robert Ryan captures Jim’s agonized self-hatred. And Ida Lupino burnishes the screen as the sightless angel whose compassion gives him one last chance at life.