Nightfall (1956)
Directed by: Jacques
Tourneur.
Written by: Stirling
Silliphant based on the novel by David Goodis.
Starring: Aldo Ray (James Vanning),
Brian Keith (John), Anne Bancroft (Marie Gardner), Jocelyn Brando (Laura
Fraser), James Gregory (Ben Fraser), Frank Albertson (Dr. Edward Gurston), Rudy
Bond (Red).
Jacques
Tourneur’s Nightfall is a classic wrong man noir – released the same year as
Hitchcock The Wrong Man, his underrated classic starring Henry Fonda and a
never better Vera Miles. Hitchcock probably could have made a classic out of
this narrative as well, but as it stands, Tourneur does a great job with this
economic noir for Columbia – who churned out these films on the cheap. Tourneur,
a journeyman director, who excelled working with low budget in the early Val
Lewton films – especially masterpieces Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie –
and the year after Nightfall in Curse of the Demon. He also excelled at noir –
making one of the best the genre ever produced with Out of the Past (1947).
Nightfall isn’t that – but it’s an excellent little thriller.
The
square jawed, usually kind of dull Aldo Ray stars as Rayburn in Nightfall – a
man on the run. When we first meet him in Los Angeles, we don’t really know
what he’s on the run for, or whether he’s guilty. What we do know is that two
gangsters – the brains, John (Brian Keith) and his psycho sidekick Red (Rudy
Bond) are tracking him – convinced he has $350,000. Also on his trial is Ben
Fraser (James Gregory), an insurance adjuster. Rayburn in the main suspect in a
murder in Wyoming – and has been on the run ever since. The girl, there’s
always a girl, is Marie Gardner (a young, wonderful Anne Bancroft), a model at
first used to draw Rayburn out – but then she falls for him.
Tourneur
uses Ray’s stiffness to good use here – I’m still not convinced he was a
particularly good actor, but here as the innocent on the run, he is very good.
He’s got a raspy voice, and is prone to making speeches about his past in a way
that a smarter actor wouldn’t have been able to pull off. He’s pretty much a
sweet dope – the kind a femme fatale would normally wrap around her finger. But
Bancroft isn’t really playing that here – she certainly does seduce him
expertly, and for a job, but she really does fall for him – she likes the big
dope. The rest of the cast is fine – in particular Rudy Bond who is excellent
as the giggling psycho. You kind of wish that Gregory’s insurance man wasn’t
just a functionary of the plot – which is at least more than you can say for Jocelyn
Brando as his wife, who is probably the least necessary character in the film –
odd for a film that is economical in every other way.
The
action climax, set in Wyoming, may well have been an influence on Fargo. It’s
hard not to think of the Coen’s classic – made 40 years after this one – with its
lost, buried money, it’s endless snowy landscape – and, well, something not
designed for chopping up humans, chopping up humans. Like the rest of the film,
Tourneur expertly handles the action climax as well.
I’m not
going to argue that Nightfall is a lost Tourneur masterpiece. It is no Out of
the Past or Cat People or I Walked with a Zombie. But what Nightfall is an
entertaining, economical little thriller – part Hitchcock, part noir, which
moves at lightning speed for 78 minutes, and ends just when it should. This is
the type of film that Hollywood used to be able to churn out in their sleep,
and now doesn’t seem to know how to make at all.
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