On Dangerous Ground (1951), directed by Nicholas Ray. Another noir for November, On Dangerous Ground begins on the gritty city streets at night. We meet jaded cop Jim Garrison (Robert Ryan) who is lonely, worn out, and psychologically damaged by the “garbage” he has to deal with in his job. He is prone to violence and to cool him off his superior sends him on a trip north to help a country sheriff solve a murder. The film, then, has two parts, one dark and city-bound and the other light and snow-bound in the country. Light and dark permeate the film in ironic ways. The woman (Ida Lupino) whom Jim meets in a lonely farm house lives in the dark; she is blind. The farmer (Ward Bond) whom Jim meets is as prone to violence as Jim is. In other words, the film focuses on Jim and his coming to terms with his demons when he meets these two people in an isolated landscape. The plot is incidental; the characters are central. Ryan’s cop is a typically flawed and paranoid noir hero, but he is also a familiar Ray character, a rebel without a cause, a man in a lonely place, a Johnny without his guitar; he is in an odd place. He has been living by night. His victory is bitter and his blood is hot. He blunders into the blind woman’s house and knocks things asunder. By the end, he has attempted to put things back together, but whether he has been successful is doubtful. This is, after all, a noir. 

They Live by Night (1948), directed by Nicholas Ray. This film was later remade by Robert Altman (Thieves Like Us). Ray’s version of the story is his first feature film, and it stars Farley Granger as Bowie Bowers and Cathy O’Donnell as Keechie Mobley, two young people star-crossed, and on the lam as the film moves along. The opening shot from a helicopter, followed by a few other helicopter shots in the film, give the sense of a large world that these two youngsters will not be able to navigate. Their fate is sealed, as it were. Ray was fascinated by young people caught in a world of betrayal and crime and misunderstanding. His most celebrated look at such a world is, of course, Rebel Without a Cause. Here, in They Live By Night, we have Rebel Without a Cause mixed with Gun Crazy or Bonnie and Clyde. Keechie and Bowie are not like the protagonists in those two films, but they are in a similar world. Ray’s penchant for images that are, for lack of a better word, symbolic is evident in Chickamaw (Howard da Silva), the one-eyed Cyclopean figure, in various shots through grill work or bars, in close-ups intended to reflect innocence or its opposite. Scenes at the garage with Bowie at work on changing a tire are suitably touched with grit and grease. Bowie is both sweetly innocent and yet clearly fallen into an underworld he does not try hard enough to repudiate. For the most part, this noir eschews those dark and damp city streets, choosing the open road, the country cabin, and out of the way places for its action. Still, they live by night because they cannot risk travelling by daylight when someone might recognize young Bowie. As it turns out, someone does recognize young Bowie anyway, and someone else who has ties to the gang of thieves Bowie has become part of proves to be a snitch. As for us, the viewers, we just hang on for the ride.

 

Knock on Any Door (1949), directed by Nicholas Ray. This is a noir film with both a difference and a purpose. The difference is that this film lacks much in the way of damp dirty and dark city streets with stark lighting, although it does have plenty of scenes in Skid Row, New York, and it does not have a femme fatale, and it does not have the usual gaggle of gangsters and detectives. What it does have is two main characters, one a successful lawyer (Humphrey Bogart) and the other one of Ray’s troubled youth from his gallery of young men who find themselves in big trouble (John Derek in his first role). The purpose is to direct our attention to the effects of poverty and a failed justice system. This is essentially a court room drama in which the story is filled out in extensive flashbacks. To provide the film’s message concerning delinquency and injustice with punch, Ray delivers a story that is relentlessly downbeat. Perhaps the courtroom confrontation between “pretty boy” Nick Romano (Derek) on trial for murder and scar-faced prosecutor  Kerman (played by George Macready) is too obvious or even devious, and perhaps the depiction of life on the streets is not quite as gritty as it might be, but the film nevertheless delivers its message effectively, especially after the verdict when Bogart delivers his final words to the court and to the viewer. Oh, and young Nick’s credo is: “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”

 

A Woman’s Secret (1949), directed by Nicholas Ray. This film is often categorized as a film noir, but it has more in common with the cheap mystery films made at the time by small studios such as PRC and Monogram. It has a not-quite murder mystery, a Miss Marple-like woman detective, a likeable detective (not hapless, as in so many of the cheapie mysteries), and a plot that spills things wily-nilly, taking us from New York to Paris to a luxury liner, locations we do not often associate with noir. If this is noir, it is noir light. The narrative has its interest in its use of flashbacks, flashbacks that include more than one telling of the near fatal incident. For me, what makes this film interesting is the pairing of two quite different women – Maureen O’Hara and Gloria Grahame. This plays out, or so it seems to me, as a precursor of the female struggle Ray reprises, with quite a different result, in his later film, Johnny Guitar. In both films, two women strive against each other; they are opposites often shown wearing clothing that is either dark or light. Although these women are adversaries, there is a tension between them that suggests their attraction for each other. In A Women’s Secret, the Maureen O’Hara character goes so far as to say that the Gloria Grahame character is living her (O’Hara’s) life. They meet when Grahame falls on some steps, and O’Hara picks her up and brings her to life, as it were. The backdrop to all this is performance. Both women are singers (shades of Gilda here). In a nice touch, O’Hara loses her voice to a strange kind of laryngitis and Grahame has her voice dubbed (no, the audience is not supposed to know this, but it is a nice touch anyway). The performances are good, and despite the tepid noir touches, the film manages to hold our attention. And it does have Gloria Grahame.

 

Born to be Bad (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray. Here is another Ray film on the edge of noir. It is also a sly presentation of Randolph Hearst (Zacharay Scott’s character is very wealthy, has a pencil-thin moustache, likes to fly, and pursues a young woman played by Joan Fontaine). And again, Ray gives us two women, opposites who compete for the same things. Those same things here are money, position, and men. Joan Fontaine’s Christabel is more accurately a Geraldine, if you get my drift. Her adversary, Donna (Joan Leslie), is the innocent here. Donna is intelligent, an editor for a big publishing house, but of course she does not see the duplicity at work in Cristabel’s manipulations. As for Christabel, she is a drop-out from business school who wants the wealthy man, and she also wants the dashing young novelist, Nick (Robert Ryan). She wants the two of them, and she wants them at the same time. Both the wealthy guy, Curtis (Zachary Scott), and Nick are taken in by the cunningly winsome Christabel. Well, this is not precisely the case; Nick sees through Christabel’s character, but he doesn’t care that she is a manipulator and a cheat. The same might be said of Gobby, the gay painter who is a hanger on in high society. Gobby likes Christabel because she is interesting as a study. Meanwhile we have a rich uncle and an ailing aunt for Christabel to either court or ignore depending on what she might need at the time. All this is, perhaps, more the stuff of melodrama than noir. I am not sure why this film finds itself included on lists of noir films. This may have something to do with the tangled web that always ensnares people in the noir world. Endings in film noir, even when they are ostensibly happy, leave us with a sour taste.