Nightfall (1957)

Nightfall is an American thriller film first released in 1957, directed by Jacques Tourneur.  The film is based on a novel by David Goodis and stars Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Anne Bancroft, Jocelyn Brando and James Gregory.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


One evening, commercial artist James Vanning makes the acquaintance of Marie Gardner in a cheap bar.  She claims to be a model and offers to pose for him, but on leaving the bar Vanning is seized by two thugs and bundled into a car.  Vanning’s abductors threaten to kill him unless he hands over the loot that he stole from them some time ago.  Vanning manages to outwit the two hoodlums and makes Marie’s flat his next port of call, convinced that she is in cahoots with his enemies.  Marie convinces Vanning of her innocence and together they take to the road.  Their destination is Wyoming, the place where Vanning’s nightmare adventure began.  Several months ago, Vanning was enjoying a quiet fishing trip in the area with his friend Dr Gurston when they ran into a pair of armed bank-robbers.  Gurston was killed by the crooks, but Vanning made a miraculous escape with the stolen money.  Somewhere, in the snowy wastes of Wyoming, the money is still there, waiting to be claimed...

Immediately before he began work on the classic horror film Night of the Demon (1957), director Jacques Tourneur knocked out this formulaic but nonetheless entertaining film noir thriller in which a stunningly sensual Anne Bancroft plays femme fatale to a deceptively cute Aldo Ray. Tourneur’s attempts to breathe life into a dying genre - principally by having much of the action take place in the snow-covered Wyoming wilderness - are only partially successful.  The stylish camerawork and moody lighting, a perfect example of the film noir aesthetic, lend an aura of sustained menace that is so appropriate for a tale of paranoia and deadly intrigue in which a man tries desperately to rid himself of a troubled past.  The film’s impact is slightly diminished by a plot that relies too heavily on contrivances and some unconvincing characterisation, but this is made up for by Tourneur’s masterful direction, which brings a gritty realism and viciously hard edge to a familiar genre. 

Aldo Ray is surprisingly effective as the film’s hunted central protagonist, not the conventional hardboiled noir hero but a quieter, more visibly tormented personality who appears constantly vulnerable, even when he has the redoubtable Anne Bancroft to protect him.  Rudy Bond’s guntoting villain, a sadistic crook with absolutely no scruples and a chilling resemblance to George W. Bush, introduces an element of dark humour into the proceedings, and this could be why we find it easier to root for him than for the far less interesting good guys.  Who, having sat though the nerve-wracking denouement, feels that the right person ended up being turned into chop suey by that runaway snowplough?   Nightfall is one of the more enjoyable of the late film noir thrillers, even if it does feels pretty tame when compared with Jacques Tourneur’s previous masterpiece in the genre, Out of the Past (1947).   The film is based on a novel of the same title by the American crime writer David Goodis, whose other cinematic adaptations include the Bogart classic Dark Passage (1947) and François Truffaut’s own stylish foray into film noir territory, Tirez sur le pianiste (1960).

© James Travers 2011

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