Phillim Aldo Ray, in case you didn't know, had 'it'. Big athletic tough guy with sensitive eyes and heart on both sleeves, and a sharp intelligence. In this noir he plays an artist pursued both by the cops and the crooks -- and Anne Bancroft leaps at the chance to hitch her wagon to the big lug with a nice face and trouble from all sides.Jaques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) directs with exceptional taste and restraint. All the actors are nicely human as they go through some pretty grisly stuff at a brisk pace.Brian Keith as the big bad guy plays him low-key and reasonable but not averse to torture if it works. Rudy Bond as his partner makes the wise-cracking sociopath genuinely funny thus ridiculously menacing.Ray is such a unique presence -- intuitive, always connected, soft raspy voice. He is in very good shape at this point in his career -- as is Bancroft -- a very interesting chemistry between them. Bancroft's take on the woman is grand -- he has her at hello, thus she's game for any number of perilous adventure to save him. Ray handles Sterling Siliphant's dialog with not one false move. 'Nice place. I'll try not to bleed over everything.' in lesser hands would be much lesser indeed. People who liked Ray (John Wayne et al.) liked him for his direct honesty -- which is probably why Hollywood knocked him around for a while without making him a huge star. And yeah the booze . . .

edwagreen One thing about actor Aldo Ray. To me, his craggy voice disqualified him forever from being the leading man type in films. This 1957 film is absolutely no exception to that rule.He goes hunting with a doctor and they are set upon by bank thieves, who kill the doctor and run off in error with his bag instead of their bag containing the money they had stolen from a bank heist.To make matters worse for Ray, they had tried to concoct where Ray shot the doctor and then killed himself.A very young and beautiful Anne Bancroft is caught up in all this and the two guys seek out Ray, since they feel he has stolen the money.This film takes place mostly in Moose, Wyoming and the outdoors is a perfect setting for this rather taut crime thriller.

bob the moo Nightfall sees an innocent man drawn into a crime and trying to get out from under. He is being followed by two groups – one is an insurance investigator looking into the theft of a large amount of money that he believes James has, the other group are the men who actually stole the money but misplaced it and now also believe that James has it. The film follows this thread, using flashbacks to fill in the details while also moving he story forward. It is a pretty nice device as it goes, because it allows a lot of action to be happening at the same sort of time in the film even if events were further apart at either end of the story.The downside of the flashback device is that it is trigger by James telling "love interest" Marie about his past; Marie doesn't seem to exist for any other reason than enabling this plot device to be used, so when she is not being used this way then she feels a little bit redundant as a character and does get in the way a little bit. Despite this though the film does have a good pace to it and, more importantly, I liked how mean it was. Although it is not graphic (or even shown) the violence is suitably cruel and mean-spirited at several points – I like this because it adds real danger to the film. Equally, the two criminals have a friendly callousness to them where they don't make a big deal out of murder – they do it with the same air as they would stop you to ask the time, it is nicely played and again it adds to the threat level.Ray plays against this well, he isn't overly moral or innocent and he has a bit about him. Bancroft is OK but mostly is just a device and, when not being that, she does the obvious love interest thing – she often breaks the tough feel since she never convinces as a woman drawn into this violence dangerous world. The villains are the best played for my money though, don't know their real names but both have a morally vacant friendliness that is quite chilling for the film and the period. Tourneur directs well to make the most of this threat and I liked the delivery and structure.In the end it is what it is and it does the job well. The plot is straightforward but the structuring makes it more interesting and well paced, while the tough edge is effective in giving the action a real sense of threat and danger that makes it more engaging.

secondtake 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.