Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Nightfall is an essential film for fans of Aldo Ray. In most of his pictures, Mr. Ray is fresh and he's real, though not an overly studied actor like many of his peers. He puts his entire personality into the roles he plays without artifice. When the Columbia honchos cast him with more stage-trained costars (Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith and James Gregory) like they have done in this picture, the result is a truly interesting set of dynamics and interplay.The story is told mainly in flashback and the pacing is fairly brisk. Several breaks from the action occur with the characters reflecting on what has happened in the recent past and on what is about to happen in the immediate future. The outdoor winter scenes are truly breathtaking, especially the climactic ending where our hero battles a bad guy on a runaway snowplow.

Harlan Ames As a longtime fan of Out of the Past I was disappointed when I finally saw Tourneur's "other" noir film. Despite excellent cinematography and several good scenes, the movie is sunk by a poor leading man and a hopelessly flawed story. For the latter you can't blame Stirling Silliphant. His script is unusually faithful to the source novel, and therein lies the problem.Noir novelist David Goodis wrote a handful of bleak, pulpy novels published mostly during the 1950s. "Dark Passage" and "Shoot the Piano Player" are two other Goodis movie adaptations. Goodis' novels are tough, fatalistic, and violent with interesting premises and oddball characters, especially the bad guys. His problems, which worsened over time, were a reliance on outrageous coincidence and a tendency to have characters suddenly act in bizarre ways to make the story work out. These flaws lay at the heart of Nightfall's problems.Ordinary guy Jim Vanning (Aldo Ray) and his doctor friend (Frank Albertson) are out hunting when they witness an auto crash. They run to help only to discover two robbers fleeing a bank job. The crooks let the doctor patch them up, then kill him. But instead of shooting Vanning too, they concoct the preposterous notion of handing him a loaded rifle and ordering him to kill himself to set up an apparent murder-suicide. Naturally this gives Vanning a fighting chance. Unfortunately it doesn't pan out. Vanning is shot anyway. As the robbers escape in his car they pull the hoariest stunt in the book: they pick up the doctor's bag instead of the bag containing the loot. Vanning recovers (not dead, just stunned) and flees with the money. But somewhere in his flight he loses the bag. The crooks return to find Vanning and the money gone. The chase is on.The premise is appealing: the crooks hound Vanning to tell them where the money is but he really doesn't know. However the episodic narrative is strung together by coincidences and lapses of logic, beginning with the woman Vanning picks up in a bar (Anne Bancroft), who throws in with him for no discernible reason other than to provide someone for the crooks to menace. The crooks themselves (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond) have interesting conflicting personalities, but their disagreements always seem to arise just in time to save Vanning's neck. An interesting subplot involves an insurance investigator (James Gregory) who has been secretly shadowing Vanning. We learn more about his character than that of anyone else in the cast, but he ends up having little to do with the story's outcome.The final strike against Nightfall is delivered by Aldo Ray. As written Jim Vanning is basically an ordinary guy in way over his head, so scared that he jumps when a newsie suddenly turns on the lights of his newsstand. Vanning tells us he's frightened and weary. Unfortunately Aldo Ray is beefy and tough-looking. His raspy voice, which seems to get even more gravelly in flashbacks, combines with his features to give the impression he could tie the robbers into pretzels without breaking a sweat. Alas, appearance is all in movies, and Ray lacks the acting chops to make us believe this bruiser is an underdog.In conclusion I would recommend Nightfall as a technical exercise--it sure looks good--but there isn't enough substance to make a satisfying movie.

GManfred Can't tell you how much I enjoyed "Nightfall" (but I'll try). It's another masterpiece from director Maurice Tourneur, who has managed to squeeze a great deal of storyline out of just 78 minutes of film. A guy and his doctor friend are camping out when two bank robbers crash their car near their campsite (don't you hate when that happens?). They terrorize the two, shoot the doctor, wreck the campsite and take the wrong satchel when leaving. Our hero finds the one with the money and thinks he has struck it rich and makes his way to Chicago. From hereon he is hunted for the rest of the picture.Tourneur builds suspenseful scene upon suspenseful scene as the picture careens towards its unpredictable ending, which is not really a Film Noir ending as we know them. He gets the most out of his cast, headed by Aldo Ray, who was a limited actor but manages to be sympathetic and appealing as the hunted hunter. Much of the heavy lifting is done by Brian Keith as a bank robber and James Gregory, who was very good as the insurance investigator. Anne Bancroft is the female lead in a non-taxing role as Ray's girlfriend.Tourneur does an excellent job for an independent production company on a picture which is not in the same class as "Out Of The Past", but comes close. This is a good picture which deserves more exposure and notoriety.

Sean Morrow Nightfall is one of those beautiful, crisp black and white films that make you wonder why they bothered with colour. Jacques Tourneur is at his poetic best with this simple tale of a wrongfully accused man pursued by the police and the crooks — a classic noir plot if ever there was one. The pace and place are ideal. You're caught up and carried along by the action of the present predicament while the understanding of how the protagonist got there is slowly revealed in a series of flashbacks. The cast is perfect: Aldo Ray is solid as the likable hero in the wrong place at the wrong time, Anne Bancroft has just the right combination of worldly wisdom and hope as the girl caught up Ray's troubles, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond are a couple of hard guys who don't much like each other but have 300,000 reasons to form a slightly uneasy alliance and the wonderful character actor James Gregory gives a nuanced performance as the insurance agent on Ray's trail.While Nightfall won't change your life if is a solid piece of entertainment which Hollywood seem to toss off with so little effort back in 40's and 50's. It might have been just part of a standard double bill in 1957 but if it came out now it would be hailed as something special. Nightfall has more heart and soul than current fare like Drive. It doesn't have an untoward pretentious of being anything but what it is and that's plenty good enough for me.