The visuals are simply jaw - dropping, whether of yaks being led through the snow,
a sweeping helicopter shot that takes us through a canyon before swooping over the characters traversing it on a ropewalk, or the «practice» climb, which sees Weathers stumble on a ladder across an icy chasm.
What attracted critical minds like Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and others to Nicholas Ray and his oeuvre — bored stiff as they were by the risk - averse, respectable, and ultimately neutered «cinema of quality» — was the stamp of the personal and the element of danger they discerned in his films, whether that meant the improvisatory handling of actors with a touch deft enough to coax remarkable performances out of even non-professionals; the «superior clumsiness,» cited by Rivette in «Notes on a Revolution,» resulting in «a discontinuous, abrupt technique that refuses the conventions of classical editing and continuity»; or the purely visual flourishes Ray relished — ranging from the
sweeping, vertiginous
helicopter - mounted
shots in They Live By Night to disorienting, subjective POV compositions like the «rolling camera» during a car crash halfway through On Dangerous Ground, its very title indicating the source of Ray's critical appeal.