sweeneytom

Nightfall

For someone who kept insisting he didn't deserve forgiveness, he sure looked surprised in that last second

BT1886

Nightfall

Films that arrive at the end of a movement tend to be the most derivative. Most critics place the classic noir cycle somewhere between 1944 and 1958, which puts Nightfall near the tail end—and yet, despite that and a B-movie classification,Jacques Tourneur does what he always does best and punches far above the film’s limits while receiving almost none of the recognition he deserved. Nightfall never feels like it’s retreading old ground. It goes out of its way to deviate from genre conventions in a number of meaningful ways—the refusal of a voiceover narration and, most notably, the rejection of the doomed romance were two of the first things that caught my attention. Adapted from a 1948 novel by David Goodis—one of the genre’s most distinctive literary voices—Nightfall is sometimes referred to as a “blanc-noir” for the lighter register it inhabits, at times edging toward becoming a caper story. Tourneur directs with confidence, however, ensuring that underlying noir dread stays intact. The only other Aldo Ray film I’d seen was Anthony Mann‘s Men in War, where he played the jaded Sgt. Montana. I really liked him here—there’s an innocent, boyish charm to him that’s easy to gravitate toward. Goodis wrote compulsively about men destroyed by circumstance, and Vanning fits that template perfectly. Anne Bancroft as Marie Gardner also puts a welcome twist on the form, sidestepping the femme fatale entirely to become one of the film’s strongest moral centers—trusting Vanning when the system wouldn’t. The highlight for me, though, were the two bank robbers, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond). Their constant back and forth over the logistics of their crimes was a joy to watch, and Bond‘s Red in particular brings a grinning, impulsive menace that practically steals the movie every time he’s on screen. Nightfall is a lean, mean, economical machine—not a minute wasted across its taut 78-minute runtime. That it isn’t talked about more is frankly baffling to me. ᐅ Watched in 2026 — Ranked (https://boxd.it/RjcIq)