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This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The intensity of the action, superb direction, astonishing juxtaposition of the city sequences and scenes in the tranquil, snow-filled countryside, and - probably most of all - the many hardboiled dialogues present Nightfall as a truly expressive film noir. Through a clever use of retrospectives the film introduces the audience to James Vanning (Aldo Ray), whose life story is as tragic as it is suspenseful. James wanders around town anxiously, looking as though he's waiting for someone the whole time. After his meeting with a lovely lady named Marie (Anne Bancroft) turns into a gritty kidnapping intrigue, all the pieces of the puzzle soon start to fit right in. A pair of thugs is after him, because they think that he hid the money (350,000 dollars to be exact), which they stole during a bank raid. In order to get the information out of him they try torturing him, but James ultimately manages to escape. As he returns to meet the lady, who supposedly gave him away to the criminals, brief retrospections appear on the screen, and entangle us in the whole obscure and dramatic affair. When James and his friend Dr. Gurston (Frank Albertson) were in the middle of a hunting trip they encountered a car crash and quickly realize that they the guys, whom they wanted to help, are nothing but a couple of violent robbers. They kill Dr. for their great amusement, but leave James only unconscious. When he wakes up, he realizes that what they also left behind was a bag with the cash. Soon a thrilling and fast-paced game of cat-and- mouse begins, as both the thugs and a private investigator Fraser (James Gregory) are on his trail. With the help of the previously met lady, James decides to stop the killers and retrieve the money-filled bag, which he left somewhere in the snowy country...Nightfall is an enormously moody, sombre, and hard-hitting crime drama, which achieves high level of aesthetics through the sudden yet suitable changes of scenery, overcoming some of its screenplay-related faults in the process. The shootout in the secluded, wild place is a great advantage of the film, giving it a totally different perspective than other films in the genre have. It's a low-budget, extremely economical yet successful adaptation of a 1947 novel of the same name.

An innocent man named James Vanning (Aldo Ray) finds himself in a predicament involving bank robbers. How Vanning maneuvers through his predicament is the crux of the film. There are no deep themes here, just a 1950s-style crime story, with a plot that is easy to follow.The story is quite contrived. Improbable circumstances and coincidental timing keep the plot moving. The script is rather talky. And the Anne Bancroft character, Marie, isn't really needed. In addition, there are a number of scenes wherein a criminal points a gun at someone but instead of shooting, the criminal talks and talks and talks. Which conveys the impression that the scriptwriter is padding the script.An unnecessary outdoor fashion show adds further padding. And even with all that padding, the film's runtime is still just a little over an hour. The plot, such as it is, contains minimal suspense and no mystery.Gorgeous nighttime, high contrast, B&W lighting by DP Burnett Guffey gives a wonderful noir feel in the opening credits sequence, and is easily the best element of the film. Yet later, nighttime driving scenes look like they were filmed with a day-for-night camera filter. The film's overall acting is average. I've always liked Aldo Ray. Here, with a weak script, he's merely acceptable. Ditto Anne Bancroft.There just isn't much to the film's story. Take away all that script padding, a character that is not needed, and what's left? Not much.

What makes a good film? Credible characters in incredible circumstances.That's what we get from Tourneur in this year. This is undeniably Tourneur's best year.Two of the most suspenseful films ever, this one and CURSE OF THE DEMON.This one has a lot of flashbacks. It is the sort of film that begins very ordinary, with a "status quo" effect, but the "status quo" is an illusion. There is nothing "status quo" about this, as we learn later.What works so well is the very thing that makes this a film that would be screwed up today. Indeed, it has been screwed up today. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is the same story, only not told as well.Why is that? Both are stories of an "Everyman" who chances upon mob money. Both have an aloof family man investigating the incident, caught up in a case seemingly over his head. Both have a psychotic killer.This one differs in the three dimensional characters. Today, the killers would have to be depicted as "gods" who couldn't be killed except by super humans. By today's standards, this film is the epitome of iconoclastic "blasphemy". It would horrify the beavis and buttheads of today by showing the outlaws to be mere mortals.And that's what makes this special. The two killers are real characters, not some made up one dimensional cutout. Real gangsters are mortals. They have their insecurities. That doesn't go over well today, probably because rich mobsters need to keep the "myth" alive that they are invulnerable.We wind up with five characters in search of....just in search. The five come to a climax, and it's quite credible. It wouldn't go over today, because too many people today have never been outside away from their safe cubicles. In 1957, there were more mature people, people who may not have been better, but certainly had a grasp of reality. Today, movie makers don't have to appeal to this crowd. They only have to appease the brats who have no idea what real danger is like.And that's why this film is a great film. The characters all make mistakes. It's easy to second guess with a rewind button, but real life has no rewind buttons. Real life is insecure.

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.