Insurance adjuster James Gregory is keeping the wife up.
Hot damn! He's got thugs and insurance fraud investigators on his tail. Aldo Ray is keeping the lowest profile possible, making a few bucks sketching ad concepts in a crummy walk up. Why's he laying so low - did he just pull off a bank job? Stiff his crook buddies? Maybe it's the ripple effect of Double Indemnity, but whisper "insurance fraud" and I'm there; it's one of those premises used to press down hard on a character, revealing his moral code and whether his hide is tough. Nightfall --who pulled this title randomly out of their arse, by the way?-- takes off running and doesn't stop 'til the last frame. Loved it. A bit talky, yeah, but grown up talk and succinct overall, taking us from neon-lit LA to snow-capped peaks in "Moose, Wyoming" all beautifully photographed precisely as I'd expect from Jacques Tourneur. Tiny cast is perfect with hulking Aldo Ray linking up with little cropped-hair beauty Anne Bancroft, and James Gregory using his everyday looks to blend in with the wallpaper and take notes.
The Coen brothers must have seen this one-- there were shades of Fargo throughout Nightfall -- stumbling through snow, the cozy ordinariness of our pseudo public servant Gregory, the wildcard psychopath that casually flicks chaos all over the place. Gosh, I had no idea that the dad from The Parent Trap (Brian Keith, who's just about ubiquitous in these Columbia noirs) was such a freaky deak in the 50s.
The olden days: let me help you choose from this mind-boggling number of newspaper titles, sir.
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