Nightfall is an essential film for fans of Aldo Ray. In most of his pictures, Mr. Ray is fresh and he's real, though not an overly studied actor like many of his peers. He puts his entire personality into the roles he plays without artifice. When the Columbia honchos cast him with more stage-trained costars (Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith and James Gregory) like they have done in this picture, the result is a truly interesting set of dynamics and interplay.The story is told mainly in flashback and the pacing is fairly brisk. Several breaks from the action occur with the characters reflecting on what has happened in the recent past and on what is about to happen in the immediate future. The outdoor winter scenes are truly breathtaking, especially the climactic ending where our hero battles a bad guy on a runaway snowplow.

Can't tell you how much I enjoyed "Nightfall" (but I'll try). It's another masterpiece from director Maurice Tourneur, who has managed to squeeze a great deal of storyline out of just 78 minutes of film. A guy and his doctor friend are camping out when two bank robbers crash their car near their campsite (don't you hate when that happens?). They terrorize the two, shoot the doctor, wreck the campsite and take the wrong satchel when leaving. Our hero finds the one with the money and thinks he has struck it rich and makes his way to Chicago. From hereon he is hunted for the rest of the picture.Tourneur builds suspenseful scene upon suspenseful scene as the picture careens towards its unpredictable ending, which is not really a Film Noir ending as we know them. He gets the most out of his cast, headed by Aldo Ray, who was a limited actor but manages to be sympathetic and appealing as the hunted hunter. Much of the heavy lifting is done by Brian Keith as a bank robber and James Gregory, who was very good as the insurance investigator. Anne Bancroft is the female lead in a non-taxing role as Ray's girlfriend.Tourneur does an excellent job for an independent production company on a picture which is not in the same class as "Out Of The Past", but comes close. This is a good picture which deserves more exposure and notoriety.

Nightfall is one of those beautiful, crisp black and white films that make you wonder why they bothered with colour. Jacques Tourneur is at his poetic best with this simple tale of a wrongfully accused man pursued by the police and the crooks — a classic noir plot if ever there was one. The pace and place are ideal. You're caught up and carried along by the action of the present predicament while the understanding of how the protagonist got there is slowly revealed in a series of flashbacks. The cast is perfect: Aldo Ray is solid as the likable hero in the wrong place at the wrong time, Anne Bancroft has just the right combination of worldly wisdom and hope as the girl caught up Ray's troubles, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond are a couple of hard guys who don't much like each other but have 300,000 reasons to form a slightly uneasy alliance and the wonderful character actor James Gregory gives a nuanced performance as the insurance agent on Ray's trail.While Nightfall won't change your life if is a solid piece of entertainment which Hollywood seem to toss off with so little effort back in 40's and 50's. It might have been just part of a standard double bill in 1957 but if it came out now it would be hailed as something special. Nightfall has more heart and soul than current fare like Drive. It doesn't have an untoward pretentious of being anything but what it is and that's plenty good enough for me.

Notwithstanding its very title, for his penultimate noir thriller (stylishly shot by the great Burnett Guffey), director Jacques Tourneur – who could easily lay claim to having made the quintessential example of this most beloved and influential of film genres, OUT OF THE PAST (1947) – largely abandons the safe familiarity of rain-swept Los Angeles night streets for the deadliness of blindingly white Wyoming snowscapes.Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant's adaptation of noted crime writer David Goodis' novel is well-served by a second team cast: Aldo Ray is an artist on the run from both police (who think he killed his older best friend on account of his young wife) and thugs (who think he made away with their $350,000 loot from a recent bank job); Anne Bancroft is the fashion model he takes it on the lam with after the usual "getting off on the wrong foot" start (she practically lands him into the villains' lap thinking they were policemen!); the bumpy and gradually explosive relationship between ruthless but level-headed robber Brian Keith and his trigger-happy partner Rudy Bond is spiced with several witty put-downs of one another and their quarry; finally, sympathetic insurance investigator James Gregory is forever leaving his understanding wife Jocelyn Brando for his quest of tracing the missing money (although, believing him innocent from the outset, his intention is more to protect Ray than to apprehend him).Beginning with an inappropriately upbeat and disposable title tune over the opening credits and unfolding in a complex flashback structure, the film is highlighted by four outstanding set-pieces: the car crash/murder incident in the snow that sparks off the whole narrative; one in which Ray is threatened with grievous bodily harm at an oil derrick until, eventually, he manages to escape his tormentors' clutches; a fashion show in which a costume-shifting Anne Bancroft warns an obliviously admiring Ray of the villains' presence at the same venue by running off with him in the latest creation she is exhibiting!; and, finally, the snowbound climax in which both thugs get their just desserts with a surprisingly grisly comeuppance reserved for Bond at the hands of an out-of-control snow plough!