jacques tourneur

nightfall poster

Nightfall (1956)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Starring Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Frank Albertson, and Frank Keith

Synopsis: An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.

Rating: 8/10

I was looking for a horror movie to watch yesterday afternoon (because it was Friday), but then my wife sat down next to me, and she doesn’t like horror. So I went searching for something else. The Criterion Channel is hosting three noirs from Tourneur, and I landed on this one mostly because it was short. And I’d seen it before and knew it was good.

I love the way it begins. With Aldo Ray sitting by his lonesome in a bar. Ann Bancroft approaches him, says she’s lost her wallet, and can he loan her five bucks to pay for her drinks? He does, and they have a nice time. Even get a little dinner. Then when they leave, two thugs come at them with guns and take him away.

In flashbacks we’ll learn he was out in the mountains with his friend fishing and hunting. The two bad guys have a wreck near them. Our heroes try to help and find themselves face to face with guns. They’ve just robbed a bank, have a satchel full of cash, and need no witnesses. Aldo Ray escapes. The bad guys accidentally mistake his bag for their money bag. By the time they realize their mistake, Aldo has split, hidden the money, and high-tailed it.

He wandered around the country doing odd jobs, biding his time until the coast was clear. He finds himself in Los Angeles when he meets Ann Bancroft. Meanwhile insurance investigator James Gregory has been on Also’s tail since the beginning. But he’s not so sure if he had anything to do with the robbery.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a short review. There is a nice mix of dark city noir and scenes set in the wide open spaces of the mountains. Aldo Ray is a little flat, but everybody else is terrific and the story is great.

stars in my crown poster

Jacques Tourneur directed one of the great Film Noirs Out of the Past (1947), and one of the eeriest horror movies of all time, Cat People (1942). I’ve seen a few of his other films and they are all good, so I was excited to see what he could do with a western. Stars in My Crown isn’t bad, but it’s not all that great either. It is a slice-of-life film that’s a bit too sentimental and feels like it borrows a little too heavily from To Kill a Mockingbird. Though that can’t be true as it came out years before that book was written. In fact, Harper Lee has noted that she was partially inspired to write her famous novel after watching this film. But she did it much, much better.

Joel McCrea stars as Josiah Doziah Gray who shows up in the little town of Walesburg just after the Civil War, walks into a saloon, announces he’s the new preacher, and starts his first sermon. When the saloon customers laugh at him, he pulls out his pistol and makes them listen.

Soon enough he becomes well-loved in the community. The film watches him as he gets married, has a child, and enjoys inviting the local atheist to church.

The town doctor dies just as his son (James Mitchell) comes back to town, having just graduated from medical school. He has none of his father’s bedside manner and feels people ought to just do what he says because he’s got the schooling to know what he’s talking about.

When typhoid breakout the preacher inadvertently passes it on to the schoolchildren and gets yelled at by the Doctor for not taking precautions (I’ll leave you to ponder how very familiar that sounds).

Later a free slave (Juano Hernandez) is harassed by some miners who are also Klansmen. This is where the film feels like a half-baked Mockingbird but it is much more sentimental than that story.

McCrea is enjoyable, in fact, everyone is good. The story is fine and the direction alright. It’s like an episode of Little House on the Prarie or some such thing. Fine enough to watch, but nothing particularly special.