Nightfall

The great Jacques Tourneur returned to the fatalistic dreamscape and fragmented storytelling of his legendary Out of the Past with this compact saga. Told largely in flashback, Nightfall opens on Hollywood Boulevard and ends, forty-eight frantic hours later, in the snowy glare of Wyoming’s badlands. The film’s time-skipping narrative finds Aldo Ray, with fashion model Anne Bancroft (in her first film role) at his side, hiding out from a ruthless gang of bank robbers that had left him for dead. Based on a David Goodis novel, Nightfall is a masterful riff on film noir tropes by a director still in command of his craft. 

“A model of economical filmmaking—well-sketched atmosphere, deft characterizations . . . A wrong-man flick set in a vanished America of neon signage and out-of-town news-stands . . . The cocktail lounge pickup is adroitly staged, the action climax is expertly choreographed, and a fashion show set piece is worthy of the master.”—J. Hoberman