Nightfall **** (1956, Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Anne Bancroft, James Gregory, Jocelyn Brando, Frank Albertson, Rudy Bond, George Cisar) – Classic Movie Review 5,216

Jacques Tourneur’s tense and suspenseful 1956 cult classic film noir thriller Nightfall stars screen tough guy Aldo Ray, who triumphs in casting against type as Jim Vanning, a guiltless victim finding gangsters’ bank heist loot.

Director Jacques Tourneur’s tense, suspenseful and involving 1956 cult classic American black and white crime film noir thriller Nightfall is too little known. It stars Fifties screen tough guy Aldo Ray, who successfully triumphs over his unusual casting against type as James ‘Jim’ Vanning, a troubled guiltless victim in dire danger after finding bank heist loot belonging to gangsters.

Falsely accused of both bank robbery and murder, he is being pursued both by the real killers, whose the loot it was and which they are now after, and the dogged insurance investigator Ben Fraser (James Gregory), who wants to retrieve the $350,000 in stolen money for his company and thinks that he may be the bank job’s murdering mobster.

Stirling Silliphant writes a sterling screenplay, with a strong and solid basis in a 1948 David Goodis pulp-fiction novel, effectively using flashbacks as a device to tell the backstory, and coming up with some great hardboiled dialogue.

Tourneur directs with a good measure of pace, precision and panache, producing a film with much style and suspense. It is also celebrated for its camerawork by cinematographer Burnett Guffey, who shoots in black and white on location in Teton County, Wyoming, and Los Angeles, including Hollywood Boulevard, MacArthur Park and the J W Robinson department store, where the fashion show was filmed. This is a Hitchcock-style sequence with Anne Bancroft showing off on the catwalk in Jean Louis creations, while the villains get ready to pounce.

There is top villainy from Brian Keith and Rudy Bond as the two murderous thugs, John and Red, but it unfortunate that the young Anne Bancroft is somewhat wasted as attractive model Marie Gardner, who has a yearning for the hero and picks him up at a bar, though, even so, she makes quite an impact with her beauty, style and sassy attitude. It’s a shame that, after a promising start, the role becomes quite so passive and her character ends up a mere passenger in the story. And Jocelyn Brando (older sister of Marlon) is totally wasted as Fraser’s doting, stay-home wife.

However, Aldo Ray holds the centre firmly and strongly as the rather calm, softly spoken hero, who is soon revealed to be a veteran who fought on Okinawa in WW2, now working under an assumed name as a commercial artist, and James Gregory and Brian Keith are outstanding in support, all three men giving impressively low-key performances that are very effective indeed. Reliable character actor Frank Albertson is good as ‘Doc’, who goes hunting with Vanning in the crucial flashback sequences.

Also in the cast are George Cisar, Eddie McLean, Lillian Culver, Maya Van Horn, Walter Smith and Monty Ash.

Ted Richmond produces for Copa Productions, released through Columbia Pictures.

The rather strident title theme song ‘Nightfall’ is composed by Peter De Rose and Charles Harold [Charles H Cuppett], with lyrics by Sam M Lewis and sung by Al Hibbler at the start of the film.

David Goodis (March 2, 1917 – January 7, 1967) is also known for The Unfaithful (1947, Goodis wrote the screenplay), Dark Passage (1947),  The Burglar (1957, Goodis wrote the 1953 novel and screenplay), Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and The Burglars [Le Casse] (1972).

Filming began on 12 March 1956 and it was released by Columbia Pictures on 6 December 1956 in Boston.

It was announced in July 1955 that the film rights to the David Goodis novel had been bought by Copa Productions, the film company of Ted Richmond and Tyrone Power. However, it turned out that Power did not want to appear in the film.

Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis watched Nightfall before filming Pulp Fiction. Tarantino said: ‘I went to his house and we did actually watch one print of an Aldo Ray movie. He and Brian Keith have fantastic banter. And Brian Keith is excellent.’ It’s fascinating to imagine the two guys together watching Nightfall in 1993 over a beer or two maybe.

The cast are Aldo Ray as James ‘Jim’ Vanning / Art Rayburn / Wilson, Brian Keith as John, Anne Bancroft as Marie Gardner, Jocelyn Brando as Laura Fraser, James Gregory as Ben Fraser, Frank Albertson as Dr Edward Gurston (‘Doc’), Rudy Bond as Red, George Cisar, Eddie McLean, Lillian Culver, Maya Van Horn, Walter Smith, and Monty Ash.

Nightfall is directed by Jacques Tourneur, runs 79 minutes, is made by Copa Productions, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Stirling Silliphant, based on the novel Nightfall by David Goodis, is shot in black and white by Burnett Guffey, is produced by Ted Richmond, and is scored by George Duning.

Ted Richmond died in Paris at the age of 103 in 2013. His most noted films are Bachelor in Paradise (1961) and It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963), Return of the Seven (1966), Villa Rides (1968), Red Sun (1971) and Papillon (1973).

He produced the early starring vehicles of Audie Murphy. He made The Mississippi Gambler (1953) with Tyrone Power and then formed Copa Productions together. They made Count Three and Pray (1955) and Nightfall (1957), both without Power in the cast, and Abandon Ship! (1957) and Solomon and Sheba (1959) with him. But Power died during the filming of Solomon and Sheba in Spain.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,216

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