Nightfall (1957)
A late noir and a really good one. It has some awkward moments that almost seem to have come after the fact, or from running out of money, because the rest of the film, and the best of it, is superb. It's a widescreen black and white affair, set in an unnamed (I think) big city and in wilderness Wyoming.
It's no surprise that director Jacques Tourneur makes a dark, brooding movie with unusual location shooting. Much of it is day for night stuff, but well done (very dark) and certainly adding to both the oil well scene and the stuff out in the Teton Mountains. The acting is gritty, with an edgy modernism that isn't quite visible in 1940s noirs, as rough as they sometimes get in effect.
There were two surprises for me here, though, good ones. The first is the actor in the lead, Aldo Ray, who I'd never heard of. He might come off as just a football player with a husky voice and a lot of composure, but in fact he struck me as perfectly suited for the innocent accused. He is in a predicament, and exactly how he got there doesn't matter at first. You just feel for his situation, and become increasingly sympathetic to him.
The other surprise is just seeing Ann Bancroft in the leading female role. She had been in the movies (and television) for less than a decade, and she takes on a slightly different kind of woman, not a sultry femme fatale and not someone who is just going to do what she's told. We end up rooting for her, as well.
The cinematographer Burnett Guffey was top notch, having shot "In a Lonely Place" and "From Here to Eternity" among others. But the film isn't up to snuff in other ways somehow. The plot itself is a bit of a device, improbable at moments where it didn't have to be, but without irony, just plain stretching it thin and fast. Tourneur was on a long slide in his career (though a cult classic of his, "Curse of the Demon," was due out in a few months), and I think he is just a victim along with everyone in Hollywood of the 1950s nosedive due to t.v. and changing tastes.
That said, there are so many things to like here, including a more modern feeling of noir sensibilities, it's a great movie to study, or to appreciate as much as get swept up in.
A late noir and a really good one. It has some awkward moments that almost seem to have come after the fact, or from running out of money, because the rest of the film, and the best of it, is superb. It's a widescreen black and white affair, set in an unnamed (I think) big city and in wilderness Wyoming.
It's no surprise that director Jacques Tourneur makes a dark, brooding movie with unusual location shooting. Much of it is day for night stuff, but well done (very dark) and certainly adding to both the oil well scene and the stuff out in the Teton Mountains. The acting is gritty, with an edgy modernism that isn't quite visible in 1940s noirs, as rough as they sometimes get in effect.
There were two surprises for me here, though, good ones. The first is the actor in the lead, Aldo Ray, who I'd never heard of. He might come off as just a football player with a husky voice and a lot of composure, but in fact he struck me as perfectly suited for the innocent accused. He is in a predicament, and exactly how he got there doesn't matter at first. You just feel for his situation, and become increasingly sympathetic to him.
The other surprise is just seeing Ann Bancroft in the leading female role. She had been in the movies (and television) for less than a decade, and she takes on a slightly different kind of woman, not a sultry femme fatale and not someone who is just going to do what she's told. We end up rooting for her, as well.
The cinematographer Burnett Guffey was top notch, having shot "In a Lonely Place" and "From Here to Eternity" among others. But the film isn't up to snuff in other ways somehow. The plot itself is a bit of a device, improbable at moments where it didn't have to be, but without irony, just plain stretching it thin and fast. Tourneur was on a long slide in his career (though a cult classic of his, "Curse of the Demon," was due out in a few months), and I think he is just a victim along with everyone in Hollywood of the 1950s nosedive due to t.v. and changing tastes.
That said, there are so many things to like here, including a more modern feeling of noir sensibilities, it's a great movie to study, or to appreciate as much as get swept up in.