Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Aldo Ray is being followed. Is he wanted by the law? Is he a criminal? Has he killed somebody? James Gregory is watching him and talks to him on the street corner trying to make casual conversation. Who is James Gregory? What does he want with Aldo Ray? Brian Keith and partner are also following Aldo. They obviously look like real bad guys. Anne Bancroft is introduced into the mix, but is it innocent? Does she have ulterior motives? Who can Aldo trust? By way of a flashbacks we see him and friend Frank Albertson (who's a doctor) on a fishing trip. When a car goes out of control and off the road, the doctor aids the hurt Brian Keith and they find out that they stole money and now they know too much. Aldo obviously gets away and due to a mistake they made (in leaving the money behind), they have to find Aldo and their money. With excellent use of time and place; good character actors; and good use of their environment in telling the story, we feel we are there ourselves and really sympathize for Aldo and the characters become so real and well defined that I felt I knew them all. The viewer never second guesses the film, as it plays out very logically and realistically and does not suspend disbelief. Nothing but praise for this short little film long on entertainment.

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.

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.

Aside from some of the black-and-white photography and a sexy turn by Jocelyn Brando, there is nothing interesting about this movie. The "plot" is one stupid contrivance after another, all adding up to pretty much nothing. The sappy, dippy happy ending ("and they all went to the seashore") denies it any standing as a "noir" film, never mind a "noir masterwork" like the clunks at Film Forum in New York call it. It is kind of fun to see a really good print of one of these old clunkers, but I can't help wondering why anybody bothered. Now I am wondering why I bothered to write this review; maybe to keep just one person from wasting a trip down to Houston St.