Nightfall (1957 Film) - Critical Reaction

Critical Reaction

Critic Dennis Schwartz liked the film and wrote, "Splendid adaptation by Stirling Silliphant of David Goodis's 1947 novel. Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past and I Walked with a Zombie) gets the most out of this minor film noir about a paranoid man haunted by his past, who can't fully comprehend how he got into such a tight predicament where he's being pursued by both the law and two dangerous criminals. Burnett Guffey's brilliant composite photography adds chills to the already tense narrative. His exterior daytime shots of a wintry Wyoming landscape signify danger contrasted with the neon-lit dark city night streets that signify safety."

Critic Jay Seaver gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Nightfall isn't worried about purity of genre; it occasionally threatens to become an almost light-hearted caper movie...The storytelling is more than a bit cumbersome. Stirling Silliphant's script starts shaky, with Vanning making annoyingly vague comments about not being able to remember the source of his woes, and Marie's appearance in the somewhat low-class bar where she meets him almost seems out of character by the end. The direction is similarly uneven; Jacques Tourneur has some impressive items on his résumé but also a fair amount of mediocrity, and this one's somewhere in between. He gets us into and out of flashbacks smoothly, and knows when to sit back and let the actors do their thing. If the end fizzles, it might be less Tourneur's fault and more the environment he was working in - the finale really calls for a bit of blood spatter, but you just didn't get that in 1957, so the tension that has been built nicely doesn't quite have the release one might like."