Good story, Not enough for a whole film

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's good to find that Joseph M. Newman's tautly atmospheric noir, "Dangerous Crossing" (1953), has retained its cult status in 2017 (available on a 10/10 Fox DVD). However, there is another Newman noir that deserves a lot of attention even if it is little known, namely "The Luckiest Guy in the World" (1946) (available on Warner's 10/10 "Ziegfeld Follies" DVD). This final entry in M-G-M's famous "Crime Does Not Pay" series of two-reelers is a neat little package, appropriately lit in often somber hues by Charles Salerno and convincingly acted by Barry Nelson as the guy who has nothing, wins everything, but pays!

First off, there are two things that annoyed in this film. Jeanne Crain wore a mink coat for much of the film. Just seems odd that in a crisis she'd be running around the ship in a mink. And, she was too borderline hysterical for much of the film...although I guess in a way that played into the plot. But I prefer my screen actresses to have enough guts to pull themselves together as they work to solve their mysteries. I don't attribute either of these annoyances to Jeanne Crain (who in my view can do almost no wrong), but rather to director Joseph Newman...and perhaps to the time of the film -- 1953 -- when women were supposed to be helpless without a husband and every woman wanted a mink coat (at least they all did on "Queen For A Day"!).Aside from those two annoyances, I very much liked this film, and that it was filmed on the same sets as "Titanic" (Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck), which was made the same year.Now, in regard to the plot, if you read message boards on IMDb about this film, dismiss them. Those mentioned are almost all because the viewer either didn't pay attention to parts of the film or because they ignored certain factors. For example, one of our reviewers asked if Betz wouldn't be recognized when he claimed the estate. No...he was acting for a relative who would claim the estate! Actually, except for the two concerns I had at the beginning of my review, this film had a pretty good plot. I agree with another poster that Hitchcock could have done even more with this story...but, Hitchcock wasn't the director. Admittedly, there are a couple of places where just one or two more lines of dialog could have made things clearer.Jeanne Crain is as lovely here as ever...and just as good an actress...I just wish the director hadn't wanted her to be quite as hysterical (although that gets her locked in her cabin, which is essential to the story). I enjoyed Michael Rennie; here he is the ship's doctor. Rennie is good here...good as the good guy, although there is a moment when you suddenly think he's in on the crime. Max Showalter was a staple at 20th Century Fox at the time this film was made, but often (as here) he's simply used as a way to advance the plot, rather than getting into any character development. However, he was a dependable character actor. Despite having a key role, we see little of Carl Betz (as in "The Donna Reed Show"); he does his job as the bad-guy-husband. Mary Anderson as a stewardess was fairly good, although I kept trying to place some other role she had played in another film (but I never succeeded). Willis Bouchey, here as the ship's captain, is always a welcome presence in any film; another very capable character actor. Yvonne Peattie as Miss Bridges Though not perfect, this is darned good film noir mystery, and I recommend it for any one who likes the genre, and especially for fans of Jeanne Crain.

I could only award this film 4/10 as I found it very irritating on several counts, (despite unfettered praise from nearly all your other reviewers).Perhaps the screenwriter, Leo Townsend, should be blamed as he made the character of Ruth (Jeanne Crain) needy, neurotic, paranoid, melodramatic and rather wet.I brightened up when Dr Paul Manning (Michael Rennie) slapped her face to bring her to her senses at one stage.Also irritating was the stock footage of "The Queen Mary" posing as an American cruise liner, the producer should have picked a less recognisable vessel as it grated on me to hear American crew accents on a British liner! I disliked how Jeanne Crain's character kept drawing attention to herself and monopolising nearly all the time of the ship's doctor.When did Dr Paul Manning find time for his other patients?Jeanne Crain's character in this film continued to give women a bad name, being pathetic, standing on the sidelines while the "baddie" grappled with the "goodie" by the ship's rail at the denouement.The evil stewardess' character was insufficiently dramatised.Ruth obviously should have lived with her fiancée much longer to learn about his true character.As a previous reviewer stated "Marry in haste - Repent at leisure".The director/producer must also take a large part of the blame for this "B" picture.

"Husbands can get lost so easily," someone tells Jeanne Crain's character in the 1953 Fox thriller "Dangerous Crossing," and boy, do those words ever prove prophetic! Here, Crain plays Ruth Stanton, a wealthy heiress who departs on a honeymoon cruise after a whirlwind courtship. When her husband (Carl Betz, who most baby boomers will recognize as Dr. Alex Stone from the old "Donna Reed Show") disappears from the ship before they even leave the NYC harbor, Ruth becomes distraught...especially since no one on board, including the ship's doctor (sympathetically played by Michael Rennie), will believe the story that her husband ever existed! What follows is a tale of escalating suspense and paranoia, with no one on the ship seemingly worthy of Ruth's--or our--complete trust. While not precisely a film noir, "Dangerous Crossing" certainly does have its noirish aspects, and the scene in which Ruth searches the boat for her husband at night, in a dense mist, the only background sound being the intermittent blare of the ship's foghorn, is one that all fans of the genre should just love. Jeanne, very much the star of this film and appearing in virtually every scene, looks absolutely gorgeous, of course (the woman had one of the most beautiful faces in screen history, sez me), and her thesping here is top notch. She is given any number of stunning close-ups by veteran cinematographer Joseph Lashelle, who years before had lensed that classiest of film noirs, 1944's "Laura." In one of the DVD's surprisingly copious collection of extras, it is revealed that the picture took only 19 days to produce, at a cost of only $500,000; a remarkably efficient production, resulting in a 75-minute film with no excess flab and a sure-handed way of delivering shudders and suspense. Very much recommended.