On Dangerous Ground is a 1951 film released by RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by John Houseman. The screenplay was written by A. I. Bezzerides based on the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler . The cast included Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper , Anthony Ross , Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe , Sumner Williams , Gus Schilling and Frank Ferguson .

On Dangerous Ground is a film noir drama generally considered to be one of director Nicholas Ray's best works. There are fine performances from the two lead actors Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino, but perhaps the single most memorable contribution is the score from composer Bernard Herrmann. The film opens with Herrmann's impassioned music of which is played over the RKO logo and the title credits as the camera cruises down a dark city street. The stark nighttime scenery immediately signals the noir atmosphere but Herrmann's music suggests more than one layer of disturbed emotion over the scenery. The intense, almost sadistic music symbolises the psychological malaise of Robert Ryan's Los Angeles cop Jim Wilson toughened by his job and cracking up in the process. Ryan's edgy performance dominates the first act, creating a sense of tension and pent-up emotion. By the end of this first act, his character has lost control. "What kind of job is this, anyway?" Wilson cries after he's restrained by his partner from beating up a thug. "Garbage, that's all we handle, garbage!"

In the second act, Wilson is sent up north to cool out. "Siberia", he wryly notes, but Wilson's exile to the wintry countryside marks the beginning of his journey of redemption though he is given a job that is not too dissimilar from what he has left behind in the city -- to investigate a killing. Following a pursuit of the killer, Wilson is brought together with a blind woman Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), the sister of the fugitive. The scenes between Jim and Mary, intimate and haunting, define the process of Jim's discovery of his human side. Once again, Herrmann's music is crucial in bringing out the pathos of this central relationship, indicated by the use of the viola d'amore in some of the most moving music the composer had ever written. In the final brief third act, Wilson's redemption is a foregone conclusion, but it is his journey towards that redemption that matters most: in that journey Wilson has walked on dangerous ground. Ray guides his hero through this dangerous ground of violence, loneliness, and obsession much as he does his other anguished heroes and heroines in Johnny Guitar and Bitter Victory -- all the time echoing the words of the cop who berates Wilson's pathological toughness in the first act: "To get anything out of this life, you got to put something in it — from the heart!". On Dangerous Ground is a journey out of the heart of darkness, a recurring theme in the cinema of Nicholas Ray.