TOUGH GUYS AND DISHY DAMES

To a certain kind of moviegoer, it's a great sign when a mid-day showing is populated mainly by excited solo viewers. An afternoon showing of Jacques Tourneur's 1956 noir "Nightfall" looked just this way last weekend at Film Forum in New York, where a new 35mm print is being screened through June 17th. The film stars Aldo Ray as a good guy on the lam in a classic "wrong man" set-up: James Vanning (Ray) witnesses the murder of his best friend by a pair of bank robbers fresh from a heist and winds up being accused of the crime himself. There's also a question of the stolen money, which has gone missing. While hiding out in Hollywood Ray encounters a young model named Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft), who asks to borrow five dollars. They have dinner and drinks at a piano bar, exchanging just enough barbs to hint at a future fling before Vanning is kidnapped by a pair of thugs. The first ten minutes of the film are aesthetically and thematically promising: oh, a viewer thinks—to make movies in the day when thugs wore boxy suits and spit phrases like "Fat chance"!

Speaking of thugs, the pair in "Nightfall" are unusually perverse. The Brooklyn Rail called one of them a "psycho's psycho", and it's not giving too much away to reveal that a murderous snowplow figures into the final scene. Purists will be happy to note that all of the noir elements are firmly in place: face-obscuring shadows, tough talking, cigarette smoke and cold-blooded villains. The women say things like, "What you need is a drink and some lamb stew." The men threaten to kill each other at abandoned oil derricks. "You don't know what it is to live with your back against the wall, Marie," James says at one point. "I'm always meeting the wrong man," is her response.

"Nightfall" a terrific and manly film full of smoking, drinking, hunting, talking about the war and men doing their jobs—some of those jobs legal, others not. Even Bancroft exhibits a steely roll-with-the-boys quality. The 35mm print is a gorgeous one, and fans of noir would be wise to add the under-rated "Nightfall" to their viewing plans.

"Nightfall" plays at Film Forum through Thursday, June 17th

~ MOLLY YOUNG