Nightfall

Back to Columbia noir, featured on the Criterion Channel. Next up is Nightfall, a Jacques Tourneur (he directed perhaps the greatest noir, Out of the Past) from 1957. It's no Out of the Past, and departs from noir tradition (it has a happy ending) but is brisk and interesting.

Aldo Ray (not a good actor) stars as a man being tailed by an insurance investigator (James Gregory). He is also being sought by two hoodlums, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond. In flashback, we learn that Ray was out camping with a buddy when they helped two men in a car accident. Those two, Keith and Bond, had just pulled a bank job, and despite the kindness shown to them, wanted to kill the men to protect their identities. But Ray escapes, with the loot, and now they want it back. Only Ray doesn't know where it is.

The film also stars Anne Bancroft as the girl who gets pulled along. She and Ray don't have very good chemistry (they smile a lot, unusual for a couple fleeing murderous criminals).

Nightfall has some good L.A. scenes (including one at an oil field that made me think of The Big Sleep) as well as location shooting in the snowy mountains. Bond is a highlight, playing a psychopath with a malicious giggle. Keith is much more pragmatic, and by the end of the film has had enough of Bond. "Why don't you like me?" screams Bond, holding a gun on Keith.

So, not a classic film, but a solid one. Ray, interestingly, was a favorite of Quentin Tarantino's. He wrote the character Butch in Pulp Fiction as if Ray could have played it, and named Brad Pitt's character in Inglorious Basterds Aldo Raine.