Nightfall (1957, J. Tourneur)

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Plot Synopsis by Bruce Eder
Commercial artist James Vanning (Aldo Ray) and his friend, Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson), are on a hunting and fishing trip in Wyoming when they stop to help two men whose car has crashed. The pair, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond), turn out to be escaped bank robbers, on the run with 350,000 dollars in stolen cash after a clean getaway, and they don't plan on leaving any witnesses -- Gurston is shot dead by Red, using Vanning's hunting rifle, but Vanning survives by accident, knocked cold but alive. He awakens to discover the stolen money, accidentally left behind, and runs with it from the returning killers -- he gets away but loses the bag in the blizzard that hits. He manages to make it to the nearest town, but not before the doctor's body is found, with a bullet in it from Vanning's rifle. Now the prime suspect in the murder, Vanning takes it on the lam, hiding out for months -- unbeknowst to him, however, he's been under observation for most of that time by Ben Fraser (James Gregory), an investigator from the insurance company whose policy covered the bank that was robbed; and has been found by John and Red -- and all of them think that Vanning can lead them to the missing money. But John and Red are perfectly prepared to torture and even maim Vanning to get the money, and they get their chance when he lets his guard down one night to talk to Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft), a young model he meets in a bar. He manages to get away from his captors after a fierce struggle and makes his way to her place; after convincing her that it's not the police he's running from (which is not entirely true), they take off together, with Fraser and the two hoods only a half-step behind, headed to Wyoming and the spring thaw so he can hunt for the bag and the missing money and prove his innocence.

"Nightfall" is a solid B-level budgeted Noir picture that Jacques Tourneur directed in the late 1950's. I read that this was somewhat of a rare Tourneur picture, never released on a home video format. So I jumped at the chance to see it on Turner Classic Movies when they aired it recently. It is your typical noir storyline; guy on the run from something tragic that happened in his past. Add a girl and some bad guys: voila! But Tourneur keeps the pace chugging along and has some good set pieces; amongst them Aldo Ray and his partner's first encounter with the bank robbers, and a shootout amongst the snowlands. I can't believe I've never seen Aldo Ray in anything before. I looked over his resume on IMDB and nothing looked familiar; I may have to do some deep digging. His voice reminds me of Marty Funkhauser on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Anne Bancroft plays the not-quite-femme-fatale and it was nice to see her in something other than Mrs. Robinson.