Five Steps to Danger reminded me of the films I used to watch on school day afternoons years ago, although I don’t remember seeing this film specifically. It was a lot of fun to see Sterling Hayden in a romantic role. He may appear in several films noir, but seeing him as a romantic lead in a film noir was a first for me. Five Steps to Danger is a rather complicated film: It’s part noir, part romance, part Cold War spy story, part road film. And it’s barely more than eighty minutes long.
The film starts with a car driving on a two-lane highway. The car crosses the solid line and drifts into the lane of oncoming traffic before viewers realize it is passing another car. Then the camera shows that the second car is being towed, with its driver still in the passenger seat. The camera shots make viewers anxious from the start about what could happen.
The man in the towed car, John Emmett, is taken to a gas station in Jefferson, California, where he decides to sell his car rather than wait one week for parts and repairs. The woman who passed him on the highway, Ann Nicholson, stops at the same gas station because her engine is overheating from a broken fan belt. Emmett takes his money from the mechanic who purchased his car and chats briefly with Nicholson because she mistakes him for a mechanic. Emmett was going to take a bus for the rest of his journey, but Nicholson offers to him a ride in her car if he is willing to share the driving. Emmett accepts Nicholson’s offer. She’s going as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that’s fine with him.
Emmett is driving when they stop for gas later that night, about midnight. He goes into the Stage Coach diner at the roadside stop to get some coffee. A car pulls into the far end of the parking lot, and a blonde woman gets out and follows Emmett into the diner. Nicholson sees her and is alarmed. Inside the diner, the blonde introduces herself as Bethke, a nurse caring for Nicholson, who she says has had a nervous breakdown. She doesn’t want to talk to Nicholson because Nicholson’s doctor thinks she should be out and independent, but Bethke wants Emmett to call her at the Estes Hotel when he and Nicholson arrive in Santa Fe.
John Emmett thinks all of this is rather odd. He refuses to take any money from Bethke, who also mentions that Nicholson is a wealthy widow. Back in the car, Nicholson confronts Emmett about Bethke. He admits to talking to her, but he didn’t take any money when Bethke offered it. He says to Nicholson that he made a deal with her that he intends to keep his original deal with Nicholson.
The next day, Nicholson and Emmett are stopped on the highway by a sheriff and a deputy. They want to bring Nicholson back to Los Angeles, where she was living, because she is wanted for questioning in a murder. Nicholson maintains that she knows nothing about a murder and she puts up enough of a struggle that the deputy tumbles down the embankment at the side of the road. The sheriff handcuffs Nicholson and Emmett together, but Emmett isn’t happy about the sheriff’s rough manner. Another struggle ensues, and the sheriff joins the deputy at the bottom of the embankment. Nicholson and Emmett are still handcuffed together, but they take off anyway. Before they drive away, Emmett stops to take the officers’ keys from the ignition of their car.
After their getaway, Nicholson and Emmett drive off the main road for a talk. Nicholson still maintains that she knows nothing about murder, and Emmett demands an explanation. Nicholson finally admits that her family is German and that they were in Berlin during World War II. All of her family were killed, but then three months prior to her trip to Santa Fe, she heard that her brother Kurt might still be alive as a prisoner in East Germany.
In a flashback, Nicholson explains that she went back to Germany to see if she could find her brother and help him come to the United States. The U.S. consulate couldn’t help her, but through underground channels, she met Karl Plesser, who told her that Kurt never made it out of Stettin, the prison camp where he and Kurt were being held. Plesser got away, but Kurt was caught and killed. Karl and Kurt were working with Dr. Kissel, a family friend that Nicholson knew from her childhood. Plesser gave a steel mirror to Nicholson. The mirror is transcribed with Dr. Kissel’s notes about his research on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Nicholson is to find Dr. Kissel wherever his is in the United States and take the mirror to him. Plesser leaves and is shot dead on the stairway leading out of the apartment building where Nicholson had taken a short-term apartment. Back in the United States, Nicholson reads a newspaper article about Dr. Kissel, who is about to start a new position as the head of the physics department at Fairmont University in Santa Fe, and that’s why she is going to Santa Fe.
Emmett is already falling for Ann Nicholson, and her explanation satisfies him. He also admits that he looks guilty now himself because he ran from the officers when Nicholson did. Their romance makes the film that much more enjoyable. With all the plot threads, the romance angle also keeps the film grounded because viewers still have to learn if Nicholson is telling the truth, who is the mysterious Dr. Kissel, who is spying on Nicholson, and why the steel mirror is at the center of so much international intrigue. In some ways, Five Steps to Danger is a typical film noir: individuals are drawn into danger and mystery through fate and circumstances over which they have no control.
(This blog post about Five Steps to Danger contains spoilers.)
As much as I enjoyed Five Steps to Danger, it still included examples of sexism that can be all too common for films made in the 1950s. For instance, Nicholson and Emmett inquire about Dr. Kissel at the home of William Brant, dean of Fairmont University. He has never heard of Dr. Kissel, and he is quick to point out that Ann Nicholson seems to be under a lot of stress and perhaps everything has become exaggerated in her mind. He doesn’t say so specifically, but it sounds like he’s accusing her of lying and/or being mentally unfit, even though she shows him a copy of the newspaper article about Dr. Kissel. Then he says that she may be having medical complications and should consult a physician. Emmett stands by her and takes charge; otherwise, she would simply be another hysterical woman to be dismissed by most of the male characters.
Another example is the scene in which Dr. Simmons, the doctor working on Nicholson’s case, is gaslighting Nicholson and her nurse, Helen Bethke. He wants to have Nicholson committed so that he can find out more about the information she is taking to Dr. Kissel. He wants Bethke to sign the commitment papers because he needs a witness and Nicholson doesn’t have any family. Bethke complies: Dr. Simmons is a man, a doctor, and her employer. When Nicholson overhears them talking, she confronts Dr. Simmons, but he uses her courage against her and tells her that she is merely being confrontational. In the 1950s, the messages in films were often that women better listen to the men because the men are the professionals, they are much more competent in general, and they are better able to control their emotions.
I wasn’t sure if Five Steps to Danger had plot holes or whether the writers assumed that viewers had enough background knowledge to understand the narrative without extra details. It’s hard to know because a lack of contemporary information is also like a lack of cultural knowledge: If you haven’t lived through the circumstances and/or the period, you often don’t know how much you are missing! But not all the missing information is the fault of viewers who happen to be living in the twenty-first century. For instance, no one ever mentions if Ann Nicholson ever got the fan belt in her car fixed, even though she and Emmett drive it to Santa Fe. Nicholson never mentions anything to the mechanic about going ahead with repairing the fan belt.
I also couldn’t figure out why Ann Nicholson wasn’t killed in Berlin when Plesser was killed in her apartment building. If spies were looking for information that was being smuggled out of Germany, they wouldn’t have needed her or Plesser. It would make sense that Plesser was killed simply because he was an escapee, but no one ever makes that clear.
The best example of a plot hole is the film’s title: I have no idea where the title Five Steps to Danger comes from, and I have tried to find out more about it online.
Five Steps to Danger is based on a novel, originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, by Donald Hamilton, which I have not read. From the little bit that I have read about it, I already imagine that the novel is darker than the film. The novel’s title is The Steel Mirror, which makes much more sense. Maybe the novel fills in all the plot holes.
I have to admit, however, that the plot holes and the inexplicable title didn’t bother me when I watched Five Steps to Danger. It was such fun to follow John Emmett (Sterling Hayden) and Ann Nicholson that I can forgive the implausible plot turns.
January 30, 1957, release date • Directed by Henry S. Kesler • Screenplay by Henry S. Kesler • Based on the novel The Steel Mirror by Donald Hamilton • Music by Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter • Edited by Aaron Stell • Cinematography by Kenneth Peach
Ruth Roman as Ann Nicholson • Sterling Hayden as John Emmett • Werner Klemperer as Dr. Frederick Simmons • Richard Gaines as Dean Brant • Jeanne Cooper as Helen Bethke • Peter Hansen as Karl Plesser • Karl Ludwig Lindt as Dr. Reinhardt Kissel • John Mitchum as Bob, the deputy • John (Frederick) Merrick as the sheriff • Charles Davis as CIA agent Edward Manning Kirkpatrick • Ken Curtis as FBI Special Agent Jim Anderson
Distributed by United Artists • Produced by Henry S. Kesler Productions, Grand Productions Inc.
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