“I wanna leave some money with the purser,” says the disappearing new husband in Dangerous Crossing (1953), leaving Ruth Stanton, heiress and former mental patient, due to overwhelming grief, to ponder his whereabouts. In this tense, yet surprisingly forgettable drama, the four stack ocean liner continues on its appointed path, unswayed by the unbalanced doings of the critters that happen to inhabit it, a metaphor of the underlying reality which Ruth is trying to discern. Perhaps she didn’t really marry? Her maiden name is in the ship’s roster, much to her distress; her husband’s luggage, gone; the ship’s officers express skepticism, nay, they even express alcohol and drugs, so to speak, as a remedy for her trauma.
And then – her husband calls.
Such is the nature of reality, as any physicist will tell you. One moment, you think you understand just what those quarks will do, and the next thing you know, the quarks are doing a gnarly wave through a slit and you’re left with your eyeballs starting from their sockets, trying to understand how something can be two things at once.
The danger is great, both physicists and the husband express. The ship’s doctor, he of the rugged countenance and pragmatic care policies, expresses concern until, in a schizophrenic turn, slaps her in a barbaric attempt to reorient her to reality, as if he has a firm grip on this most slippery of concepts! But no!
It’s another phone call! She clings to her version of reality, whether it be sane or not; the doctor, impossibly tall and good looking, insists on medicating her some more.
And then, the climax, as the doctor wrestles with the villain of the piece, the wastrel younger brother of the now-deceased father …. behind whose face did he conceal himself??
Much like old, misbegotten phlogiston theory, the movie wallows with obsolete tropes concerning the weakness of the female of the species, and this hurts what is otherwise a tense, well-thought out drama. True, it doesn’t have the engaging chemistry and patter of the old classic The Thin Man, but there is certainly some slight charm, better pacing than some movies of the ’50s, and if you permit yourself to be pulled in, the questions begin piling up as the story-telling deceit builds to a good, if not great, climax.
We all know Hollywood would insert some horrid love story if they were to do it today. Bodies would pile up, and we’d see it in exquisite detail. A movie in which certain unpleasant subjects are merely referenced has a certain charm and clarity lost, sometimes, in modern movies.
