Crackling dialogue, bluff, brittle performances and a plot riddled with “coincidences” and saddled with clumsy, chatty villains characterize “Nightfall,” a fin de noir thriller from Jacques Tourneur.
It features linebacker-in-a-suit Aldo Ray as a commercial artist fleeing two murderous bank robbers, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond as the trigger-happy dopes who keep letting him get away and Anne Bancroft as a woman our hero figures is a femme fatale but who may have other reasons for cadging $5 from him at an LA bar.
Tourneur, whose best films were stamped with his painterly way with shadowy film noir monochrome (“Out of the Past,” “Cat People”) takes us into a bars and dimly-lit rooms, out to the LA oil patch and the Tetons of Wyoming in a thriller best remembered for having it’s snow-covered finale cribbed by “Fargo,” and for the script and dialogue by the prolific and piquant Stirling Silliphant (“In the Heat of the Night,” “Village of the Damned,” TV’s “Route 66”)
“Guys have probably been swarming around you since your second teeth came through.”
That’s how James Vanning (Ray) — Or his name Rayburn? Or something else? — talks no-nonsense to the beauty (Bancroft) who sits next to him at the bar, claiming she didn’t bring cash. She works in fashion.
“I should have figured your being a model. I mean, believe it or not, I’m an artist”
“Soup cans or sunsets?” she cracks.
As this was 1956, how’d she or the screenwriter know what Andy Warhol would become famous for painting…in 1962?
Vanning’s guarded with the model Marie, but sure to get her number so that she’ll “pose” for him. He’s not that forthcoming with the stranger James Gregory) who stops stalking him long enough to strike up a chat, where we learn “Vanning” is a vet who fought on Okinawa.
The stranger? He’s got a wife (Brando’s big sister, Jocelyn Brando) and a secret of his own. He’s an insurance investigator with an interest in Vanning.
Whatever the two mugs who seem to have bribed model Marie to distract Vanning are mixed-up in is sure to involve that insurance detective. The talker (Keith) has to go to some pains to rein in his Colt 45 packing mug of a partner, Red (Bond).
“Look, Red, tonight’s his night. Might be a short one. Might be a long one. But he’s gonna keep breathing until we get an answer out of him. You got that?”
They robbed a bank. Somehow, “Vanning” or Rayburn or whoever ended up with the cash. They want it back. Flashbacks tell us the story of how they crossed pathsjust before a blizzard rolled into the Wyoming Tetons.
The Burnett Guffrey cinematography is as crisp as the dialogue, and beautifully complements the flinty, unfussy performances. It’s a short, brisk thriller, which accounts for the lack of back-story most of the characters warrant, even at their chattiest.
Silliphant writes past a lot of lapses in logic. Not only do the bad guys think of every way under the sun or moon to let their quarry get away, but they talk a lot as they do.
“Well, maybe we can get this thing straightened out, and everything will be fine.”
“And “dandy.” Don’t forget the ‘dandy.'”
The dialogue is so sharp that you almost don’t notice how EVERYbody talks too much. Vanning and Marie get into a taxi where he unloads a lot of “wanted for murder” exposition on her. As if the cabbie couldn’t hear. As if the viewer isn’t wondering why the cabbie hasn’t heard.
That goes for the finale, too, which invents another colorful, verbose argument that defies logic and stands-out as the most contrived moment in a fairly contrived plot.
But that post-war “noir” era of cynical anti-heroes randomly targeted by evil was winding down. Why not unload every thing you ever wanted a tough guy — and Ray was one of the toughest — to say to another tough guy in your script?
“Nightfall” still makes a fine late-career showcase for Tourneur’s visuals, a showcase for Ray, Bancroft and Keith, an early example of Sillphant’s ear and a reminder of just what we’d miss when color totally supplanted the symbolic shades of darkness that monochromatic film stock provided.
Rating: “approved,” violence
Cast: Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith, Jocelyn Brand, Rudy Bond and James Gregory.
Credits: Directed by Jacques Tourneur, scripted by Stirling Silliphant, based on a novel by David Goodis. A Columbia Pictures release on Tubi, Amazon, et al
Running time: 1:22
