Main Cast: Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Anne Bancroft, Jocelyn Brando, James Gregory, Frank Albertson, Rudy Bond
Release Year: 1956
Country: US
Run Time: 78 minutes
Plot
Commercial artist James Vanning (Aldo Ray) and his friend, Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson), are on a hunting and fishing trip in Wyoming when they stop to help two men whose car has crashed. The pair, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond), turn out to be escaped bank robbers, on the run with 350,000 dollars in stolen cash after a clean getaway, and they don't plan on leaving any witnesses -- Gurston is shot dead by Red, using Vanning's hunting rifle, but Vanning survives by accident, knocked cold but alive. He awakens to discover the stolen money, accidentally left behind, and runs with it from the returning killers -- he gets away but loses the bag in the blizzard that hits. He manages to make it to the nearest town, but not before the doctor's body is found, with a bullet in it from Vanning's rifle. Now the prime suspect in the murder, Vanning takes it on the lam, hiding out for months -- unbeknowst to him, however, he's been under observation for most of that time by Ben Fraser (James Gregory), an investigator from the insurance company whose policy covered the bank that was robbed; and has been found by John and Red -- and all of them think that Vanning can lead them to the missing money. But John and Red are perfectly prepared to torture and even maim Vanning to get the money, and they get their chance when he lets his guard down one night to talk to Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft), a young model he meets in a bar. He manages to get away from his captors after a fierce struggle and makes his way to her place; after convincing her that it's not the police he's running from (which is not entirely true), they take off together, with Fraser and the two hoods only a half-step behind, headed to Wyoming and the spring thaw so he can hunt for the bag and the missing money and prove his innocence. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Jacques Tourneur was a director who was full of surprises, as Nightfall amply demonstrates -- not that he hadn't done superb examples of film noir earlier in his career (check out Out of the Past and The Leopard Man), but Nightfall is as good as any crime film or thriller of its era, with unexpectedly great performances from its entire cast. Without compromising the action, the suspense, or the forward momentum of the plot, Tourneur delivers a movie filled with rich dialogue and characterizations, a good deal of dark-toned humor, and some key extended flashback sequences that fall right into place, totally breaking up the audience's expectations without slowing the pace or diluting the interest of the viewer. There's also a good deal of violence, of a very personal kind, and one pathologically sadistic character near the center (played by Rudy Bond, cast totally -- and successfully -- against type) who, in tandem with Aldo Ray in one of his best performances, dominates the screen and the action. The pacing does lag slightly just past the middle, in a fashion-show sequence that runs perhaps two minutes longer than it need have, but it sets up a final chase sequence that's as suspenseful (on a multi-layered level) and violent as anything seen in movies up to that point. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
George Cisar - Bus Driver; Lillian Culver - Woman; Maya Van Horn - Woman; Orlando Beltran - Spanish Couple; Mana Belmar - Spanish Woman; Walter Smith - Shoeshine Boy; Monty Ash - Clerk; Robert Cherry - Man; Eddie MacLean - Taxi Driver; Gene Roth - Bartender; Winifred Waring - Fashion Narrator; Arline Anderson - Hostess; Pat Jones
Credit
Ross Bellah - Art Director, Jean Louis - Costume Designer, Irving Moore - First Assistant Director, Jacques Tourneur - Director, William Lyon - Editor, George Duning - Composer (Music Score), Morris W. Stoloff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Peter de Rose - Songwriter, Charles Harold - Songwriter, Sam M. Lewis - Songwriter, Clay Campbell - Makeup, Burnett Guffey - Cinematographer, Ted Richmond - Producer, Louis Diage - Set Designer, William Kiernan - Set Designer, John P. Livadary - Sound/Sound Designer, Farrell Redd - Sound/Sound Designer, Stirling Silliphant - Screenwriter, David Goodis - Book Author
The film tells of commercial artist James Vanning (Aldo Ray) and his friend, Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson). They are on a hunting and fishing trip in Wyoming. They stop to help two men with car problems. The two men, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond), are bank robbers, fleeing with the loot and don't plan on leaving any witnesses. They murder Gurston using Vanning's hunting rifle, but through luck Vanning survives. He's knocked out cold but still alive. He awakens to discover the stolen money, left behind by mistake, and runs with it from the returning hoods. He gets away but loses the bag in the blizzard that hits Wyoming.
Critic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and wrote, "Splendid adaptation by Stirling Silliphant of David Goodis's 1947 novel. Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past and I Walked with a Zombie) gets the most out of this minor film noir about a paranoid man haunted by his past, who can't fully comprehend how he got into such a tight predicament where he's being pursued by both the law and two dangerous criminals. Burnett Guffey's brilliant composite photography adds chills to the already tense narrative. His exterior daytime shots of a wintry Wyoming landscape signify danger contrasted with the neon-lit dark city night streets that signify safety."[2]
Critic Jay Seaver gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Nightfall isn't worried about purity of genre; it occasionally threatens to become an almost light-hearted caper movie...The storytelling is more than a bit cumbersome. Stirling Siliphant's script starts shaky, with Vanning making annoyingly vague comments about not being able to remember the source of his woes, and Marie's appearance in the somewhat low-class bar where she meets him almost seems out of character by the end. The direction is similarly uneven; Jacques Tourneur has some impressive items on his résumé but also a fair amount of mediocrity, and this one's somewhere in between. He gets us into and out of flashbacks smoothly, and knows when to sit back and let the actors do their thing. If the end fizzles, it might be less Tourneur's fault and more the environment he was working in - the finale really calls for a bit of blood spatter, but you just didn't get that in 1957, so the tension that has been built nicely doesn't quite have the release one might like."[3]
Noir analysis
Film critic Alain Silver makes the case that even though the film's locations include bright snow cover landscapes the protagonist in the film is "typically noir." He writes, "Despite being made near the end of the cycle, the dilemma of Nightfall's protagonist is typically noir. Although he is a victim of several mischances, Vanning's paranoia compounds these problems significantly. Tourneur relegates those causal incidents to a flashback halfway through the film; but he does not allow them to be distorted by Vanning's point-of view. Rather, they reflect Vanning's struggle to comprehend how such violent but basically simple past occurrences have put him in such dangerous and complicated present predicament."[4]
Writer Spencer Selby called the film a "paranoid thriller which seems to be Tourneur's return to some of the territory he explored in Out of the Past."[5]
^Schwartz, Dennis. Ozus' World Movie Reviews, film review, March 24, 2005. Last accessed: January 22, 2008.
^Seaver, Jay. eFilmCritic, film review, August 24, 2005. Last accessed: January 23, 2008.
^Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, film noir analysis by Alain Silver, page 206, 3rd edition, 1992. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-479-5.
^ Selby, Spencer. Dark City: The Film Noir, film listed as film noir #280 on page 166, 1984. Jefferson, N.C. & London: McFarland Publishing. ISBN 0-89950-103-6.
Tout Ça ne Vaut pas l'Amour (1931) ·Pour Être Aimé (1933) ·Les Filles de la Concierge (1934) ·Romance of Radium (1937) ·The Man in the Barn (1937) ·They All Come Out (1939) ·Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939)
