Article by Bruce Krajewski

Blindly Putting Someone Else's House in Order: On Dangerous Ground
Printed with permission

by Bruce Krajewski (bkrajews@georgiasouthern.edu)

http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~bkrajews/

It is clear from the recent collection of essays titled Shades of Noir that film critics remain uncomfortable with the category called film noir, which is said to constitute a certain grouping of films made between 1945 and 1955. Marc Vernet and others have demonstrated that the category is an unstable one, and need not even be restricted to black and white films. Some argue for what might be called The Return of Film Noir in more recent movies like Chinatown, The Two Jakes, Cape Fear, The Grifters, Blade Runner, perhaps even Batman and Dark City. These struggles over taxonomy are about as exciting as the meteorological ambiguity about whether a particular day is partly cloudy or partly sunny, but some film critics still succumb to social science impulses, like the epistemological one of formulating precise definitions. My criterion for calling On Dangerous Ground an example of film noir will look like a weak, Wittgensteinian one: most people take it for one.

On Dangerous Ground presents viewers with a demonstration of what Stanley Cavell has called "the construction of the human," though Cavell's examples have to do with a genre he calls "melodramas of the unknown woman," in which the female character comes to realize that her life calls for some sort of transformation (Cavell 1990, 213-47). In this 1951 film, it is the male character who comes to acknowledge that his life as a city police officer has turned him into someone almost indistinguishable from the criminals he arrests, so that he is sent up north, to farm country, where his construction as a human takes place with the help of Mary.

Mary happens to be the blind sister of a person Jim is trying to hunt down, and it is the domesticated space of Mary's farmhouse where Jim's transformation occurs, a farmhouse where the living room becomes central. The room has a fireplace, plants, comfortable furniture, a piece of wood from her brother that Mary considers beautiful -- certainly a contrast to the dismal surroundings in Jim's bachelor apartment in the city, in which the decorations consist mainly of Jim's football trophies and football memorabilia. Mary's home might be considered a typical space for what some film critics have labeled "the nurturing woman," the polar opposite to the "femme fatale" (see Kaplan). Mary furthers the cultivation of the human in Jim by entrusting him with the information that the person Jim seeks is Mary's brother, Danny. Mary has been hiding Danny on the farm, and hopes to convince Jim to handle Danny with compassion. We have already seen earlier in the film that Jim's encounters with suspected criminals usually end with the suspects being severely beaten, beaten in a wild manner that causes his fellow police officers to wonder what's the matter with Jim. At several points, colleagues offer advice to Jim to get married and to settle down, both physically and emotionally. Thus Jim arrives at Mary's home knowing that he is not domesticated, not fit for everyday associations with humans, and Mary senses that as well.

It is far too easy to see this particular film noir in black and white terms, since the film depicts in literal fashion a dark, crime-ridden, urban environment that is then contrasted to the snow-covered, pastoral setting, in which Jim finds Mary's farmhouse. An effort needs to be made to see this example of a genre as pointing a way out of the implications of other examples of the same genre. That the wild and violent Jim can be domesticated works against other contemporary cinematic representations of crime, in which violence and vigilantes, operating under some version of lex talionis, are seen as the only alternatives to dealing with a world of crime and violence, and further that current representations include an opposite movement of that depicted in On Dangerous Ground, namely the move away from the human to the machine (e.g. The Terminator, Robocop, Aliens, True Lies) or from the human to the undomesticated human, i.e. the human that has, in a confrontation with the law, turned away from the community that seems unable to promote justice (Thelma and Louise, Rambo, War of the Roses, The Grifters). This latter group of films show the destruction, or degradation, of the human, rather than its cultivation.

On Dangerous Ground (1951) is a famous example of film noir, though it has not received as much attention as many other examples of the genre, such as Kiss Me Deadly. Certainly one reason for some critics' uninterestedness regarding On Dangerous Ground has to do with its happy ending, the implicit prospective marriage of Jim (Robert Ryan) and Mary (Ida Lupino). Not that unions are unusual at the conclusion of films noirs, but the setting for those unions is often a courtroom or a police station (Copjec, 19). This is not the case with On Dangerous Ground. Another reason for the status of the film probably rests with its starkly drawn dichotomies, especially between the city (dark, wet, violent) and the country (snow-covered, peaceful, empty). In a collection of pieces by the director, Nicholas Ray, Ray says:

While for On Dangerous Ground, shot in black-and-white, I wanted the warmth that color could have provided so much I let both Ward Bond and Ryan and Lupino overplay at times: the emotion was not properly controlled by the aesthetic. Had the film been in color I think I would not have stretched so much in creating the contrast of the violence and the wet, dirt, sleet, slush, and mess of Boston, with the sheen of snow, the starkness, the pastoral quality. The significance of objects is always lost without color. Not always, but now that we are used to color. (Ray, 58)

This issue about the difference between black-and-white and color would be interesting to explore (see Krajewski), but my point is about the irritation this film causes people, and Ray tells us that it's the overplaying of the characters and the schematic treatment of the two landscapes. Ray says he stretched, and this excess has caused reactions in my film classes, with the students laughing at what they consider overacting. (Some who listen and watch also poke fun at the Bernard Hermann score, which does not attempt to be subtle in its highlighting of key moments.) But this reaching is vital to the film, as emphasized by the handsome ending, with Jim returning to Mary's country home. She descends from upstairs and reaches out for Jim's hand. He gives her his hand (this time without his gloves on, which he wore throughout the entire previous scene in Mary's house after Danny's death), and the camera underscores the handsomeness of the scene by providing a close-up of their hands meeting and clasping. The intermingling of hands here can be juxtaposed to a scene early on in the film, when Jim meets a questionable character in a bar, a balding man in a pinstripe suit who holds out his hand for Jim to shake, but Jim keeps his hands in his coat pockets. This same hand from the suit then offers Jim a bribe, which Jim ignores. Mary's initial request to become acquainted with Jim is to ask for his hand. Jim is his hands.

I do not think it is too much to say that the meeting of Mary and Jim's hands at the end of the film is reminiscent of the life-giving scene in the Sistine Chapel, the one in which God's finger is about to touch Adam's, only in On Dangerous Ground it is the woman who gives life to the man below. For some, it will not be a stretch to substitute Mary for God.

The film does not allow us to forget about hands, even from a scene immediately after the credits in which the wife of one of the officers cradles a handgun to prepare the husband for wearing the gun to work. After the scene in which Jim makes a man talk by punching him, Jim goes back to his apartment to wash his hands of the event, Pontius Pilate-like. Later when the Captain hears about Jim's actions, he says to Jim: "You let yourself get out of hand." After another incident in which Jim loses his temper on a suspect (we must recall that the film is based on a novel called Mad with Much Heart, as if Jim is film noir's Achilles), the Captain says again to Jim: "What did I tell you about being so free with your hands." Then Jim picks up this hand-speech when he gets to the country, and tries to be assertive with the locals who want to maintain control of the search for Danny. Jim insists, "Let me handle this!" Also, during Danny's last attempt to escape, the camera makes sure that we see that Danny's fall results from his losing his grip on the rocks. Perhaps the most ironic use of hand-speech occurs when Jim is alone with Danny, trying to convince Danny that Jim can be trusted. Danny is afraid, and to soothe him, Jim says, "I don't have anything but my hands." Yet, as viewers, we know what those hands can do, the pain they can inflict, though, like Mary, we might believe that Jim can be trusted with Danny by that point in the film.

You do not have to scratch the surface of this film before feeling skepticism under your nails. Jim's view of the world has been affected by his eleven years of police work. In a dramatic exchange with one of his colleagues, Jim says, "Garbage -- that's all we handle -- garbage." The other policeman says, "Didn't you know? That's the kind of job it is," as if Jim has lost track of what it is he does in the world, and expects that his revelation will blind his colleagues like the bright light of ultimate truth. Jim is surprised that the other officer has been able to deal with the job for so long. "How do you do it?" Jim wants to know, "How do you live with yourself?" The officer's response, in keeping with the motif of loneliness in the film, is: "I don't; I live with other people." Still, this is a hopeful moment in the film, for we hear that Jim is trying to understand himself and the world. Jim's efforts have not resulted in trust, an overcoming of his extreme skepticism, and I do not wish to claim that Jim has overcome skepticism by the end of the film, only that he has overcome it enough to trust someone, and apparently one will suffice. (Later, someone might want to say that Jim has learned to trust himself and Mary.) He tells Mary, "You get so you don't trust anybody." What happens with hands tells us that Jim learns to trust Mary, who, as a vulnerable, blind woman, tells Jim that she must trust everyone. Judging from Derrida's catalogue of blind people in the Western tradition in his Memoirs of the Blind, one would have to say that a blind woman is an unusual figure, though Mary is not completely blind, and my sense is that the film wants to us to attend to a reversal regarding who is blind: Jim's groping around trying to make sense of the world, say, get a handle on it, using his hands not to sense the character of others (as Mary does) but often to beat others senseless, while Mary moves easily in darkness, takes risks with strangers, realizes that she cannot take the matter of Danny into her own hands, which leads her to put her trust in Jim. Derrida says skepsis has to do with the eyes, but I am not sure this is always true. Iago works over Othello's ears before providing him with the false ocular proof, and in this film, Jim's disillusionment with the world also enters by way of the ear, the constant transmission of criminal activity on the police car radio, the confessions Jim extracts when he makes suspects talk. Jim's skepsis can be traced to his hands, as I have tried to show. Derrida has something to say about the link between blindess and hands, especially moments when blindness is done away with by the laying on of hands, the same sort of healing gesture found in On Dangerous Ground through Mary's study of Jim's hand and face with her hands.

This intermingling of the faithful Mary with the extremely skeptical Jim causes each to move slightly in the other's direction (we even see the two walking together outside toward the end of the film), Mary becoming wary of Jim after Jim fails to bring Danny back safely, and Jim becoming attentive to another human being, something that seemed impossible for him back in the city, even with his fellow officers. This change in Jim happens in a kind of comical fashion during his time with Mary. At one point, Mary enters her living room with a tray for tea, and Jim remains seated. Mary interprets Jim's inactivity in a most gracious manner, informing him that it pleases her that Jim did not try to take the tray from her, and that he does not speak to her in pitying tones. Even though the audience has seen Jim show concern about his colleague's sore shoulder earlier in the film, we know that Jim's inaction could easily stem from his usual coldness toward others, and thus not count as a laudable form of Gelassenheit, as Mary glosses it.

Prior to Jim's arrival in the country, he is unfit for life, unprepared for life with Mary, which Mary points out to him in their penultimate scene, telling him he is no good the way he is now. But this scene after the car crash shows us that Jim is on the road to recovering what might be called his domestic side, for when Mary becomes upset and begins knocking things over, it is Jim who sets things right, returning overturned objects to their previous places, just as he had helped Mary to her feet. This serves as contrast to Jim's destructiveness earlier in the film, and to his own attempts at domestic life. We see several scenes of police officers with their families as the officers get ready for work, while Jim lives alone in a bachelor apartment. Even the photographs he keeps of his days as a football star are of Jim alone, not with the team. Further, we learn that Jim is reluctant to socialize with the other officers, one of whom invites him to dinner. Before he is assigned to the case north of the city, Jim admits to the captain that he feels friendless, a return to the refrain of loneliness, also highlighted in a brief exchange with an officer, who asks: "What is with you, Jim?" Jim's answer is: "Nothing's with me." Jim's recognition of this nothingness motivates him to start asking questions of others, like, "How do you live with yourself?" At the end of the film, this question no longer holds sway, because Mary and Jim will live with each other, most likely in the house that Jim helps keep in order.

The film does not give Mary all the credit for Jim's transformation. Jim loses control of a car on the snow-covered road as he and the vigilante are chasing Danny. After the crash, the vigilante emerges from the car almost immediately, and does not bother to check to see whether Jim has been injured. Jim remains slumped over the wheel for several moments, a posture symbolic of death. This seems analogous to a scene in The Philadelphia Story that Stanley Cavell describes as follows: " James Stewart enters carrying [Katherine Hepburn] in a bathrobe falling open at the knees, singing a triumphant 'Over the Rainbow,' a beautiful song about how dreams come true. Citing the form of Old Comedy as one in which the heroine may undergo something like death and revival, and noting that we can understand this entire narrative as one tracing the death and revival of the woman's capacity to feel, her rebirth as human... " (Cavell 1981, 140). My suggestion is that Jim's emergence from the car crash is a kind of resurrection, a rebirth, after which, like Tracy Lord, Jim recovers a capacity to feel, for it is immediately after the car crash that this friendless cop (recall Jim's speech before the captain about cops not having any friends) begins calling the vigilante his "friend."

WORKS CITED

Cavell, Stanley. "Ugly Duckling, Funny Butterfly: Bette Davis and Now, Voyager." Critical Inquiry 16 (Winter 1990): 213-47.

----------. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981.

Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir. New York: Verso, 1993.

Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Kaplan, E. Ann. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 1980.

Krajewski, Bruce. "Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour as Remarks on Racism” in Feminist Interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ed. Naomi Scheman and Peg O’Connor. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2002: 389-407.

Ray, Nicholas. I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies. Ed. Susan Ray. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.