Nightfall (1956)

James Vanning (Aldo Ray) has been on the run for some time now. The police is looking for him as their main suspect in the murder of a friend, while a duo of bank robbers (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond) who actually killed the man – and nearly murdered Jim as well – believe he has run off with their ill-gotten gains. For reasons best known to himself, our protagonist doesn’t trust the police enough to tell them the story of what actually happened, though in noir, unspoken war trauma is always a good guess.

There’s also an insurance investigator (James Gregory) on his trail. Things begin to come to a head on a night Jim meet-cutes model Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft), and has an encounter with the robbers, as well as – unbeknownst to him – with the investigator.

For a film that’s generally seen as a noir, Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall does certain things rather differently. Sure, there’s a plot involving mistaken identities, gangsters, and a man on the run, but the femme isn’t fatale, the only on-screen authority figure is actually trustworthy, and our hero’s genuinely innocent – running away with the money like the robbers believe he did never seems to even have crossed his mind.

Instead of the shadows of the titular nightfall, the film’s tensest scenes take place in broadest daylight and comparatively wide open spaces – and it’s not even the desert but rather a lot of snow. All of which makes for a much nicer film than you usual find in the non-genre, the sort of film where love is a real and strengthening thing instead an object of dark obsession and method of manipulation, and where the protagonist is a very decent man whose only flaw is acting a bit stupid. Nihilism, this certainly ain’t.

Curiously enough, giving up on the darkness of the noir worldview doesn’t feel like a cop out for the film at all, but just as natural as the noir’s typical darkness comes to other films of the genre.

As Ray plays him, Jim is closer to Hitchcock’s traditional thriller protagonist, an everyman getting in over his head. Though most Hitchcock protagonists of this style do not project the sense of genuine vulnerability Ray displays here, wonderfully going against what his physique of bullneck and bulk would suggest. This is a 50s man not afraid to show his fears and genuine emotions to the woman he falls for, and consequently, Marie falling for him this quickly feels much less contrived than is typical for this sort of thing.

This compassionate eye for the softer side of the characters – see also the interactions between the insurance investigator and his wife – is not a thing you typically get in any movie seen as a noir, but for Nightfall, the feeling of watching basically decent, large-as-life people involved in a thriller plot seems central.

This being a Tourneur film, that thriller plot is realized with great care, economy and style, full of genuine tension. Nearly every scene is filled with the kind of detail that’s either telling about the characters or helps create the texture of the film’s world as an actual place.

In a way, all of this is very low key, but it’s also perfectly of a piece, and utterly convincing.

Circle of Danger (1951)

Some years after the end of World War II. Having made enough money in the underwater salvaging business to afford it, Clay Douglas (Ray Milland) travels to the UK to figure out the truth of the mysterious circumstances that resulted in the death of his brother during the war. All Clay really knows is that his brother died on a joint commando raid with British forces, but he has a curious feeling that there’s more to the death than “just” the vagaries of war.

Now Clay has the funds to travel around Great Britain from Wales to Scotland to meet up with the survivors of the raid who also happened to survive the war. His doubts grow with the reticence the men show to speak of what happened to his brother; this certainly makes his investigation rather difficult.

Because a man needs a hobby, Clay has an early meet-cute with americanophile Elspeth Graham (Patricia Roc) who is as obviously smitten with him as he is with her. Turns out investigating a mystery and romancing a woman at the same time is something of a juggling act Clay isn’t terribly well cut out for.

Going by the bare plot description I did expect Circle of Danger to be a – perhaps Hitchockian, perhaps early 50s paranoid – thriller somewhat in the vein of perpetual house favourite Ministry of Fear (a film that of course also features Milland). In actuality, this is a very leisurely mystery that spends as much if not more time on Elspeth’s and Clay’s romance as it does on a very minorly realized mystery. Quite a bit of the film looks and feels a bit like a tourist board ad as well, with Milland strolling through very different parts of the UK in the studio and some beautifully shot locations director Jacques Tourneur shows from their prettiest sides.

I don’t know the – usually great – Tourneur as a director of fare this light, but once I accepted that nothing about this affair is going to be tight, exciting, or tense, and clearly isn’t meant to be any of those things, I did start to enjoy myself with it.

After all, Milland is still in his charming leading man phase, and as always a joy to behold going through these particular motions, the romance is improbable enough to work, and Tourneur shoots even the least exciting criminal investigation with great style. As an added bonus, the suddenly very tight five minutes during the climax feature an incredible use of wide empty spaces for a suspense scene.

In short: Berlin Express (1948)

Europe, under occupation after World War II. After a prologue that informs the audience something nefarious is going to go down, we are introduced to a group of passengers, strangers all, boarding a US army train to Frankfurt.

Things start to become rather interesting when one of the passengers, supposedly a German peace activist with the Allieds’ ears called Dr Bernhardt, is killed by a bomb. It will eventually turn out that the man who was killed was only a decoy, but the real Heinrich Bernhardt (Paul Lukas) is soon kidnapped by Nazis still dreaming of rebuilding their bloody Reich. Apparently, we can never get rid of those completely. Bernhardt’s French secretary Lucienne (Merle Oberon), manages to convince some of the other passengers to stop their post-war squabbling for long enough to help her find him. When actually working together, these men – American Robert Lindley (Robert Ryan), British James Sterling (Robert Coote), Frenchman Perrot (Charles Korvin) and Soviet Lieutenant Kiroshilov (Roman Toporow) – might even manage to do some good.

Which is really rather the point of a movie that’s very clearly realizing the direction the world is going after the War, and suggesting that the old fashioned notion of people from all nations and walks of life working together to improve everyone’s lot might just lead to a better world than the old way of every nation for themselves. The film’s even mildly optimistic about this possibility, at least rather more optimistic than most of today’s news will make one.

Structurally, this is not one of director Jacques Tourneur’s masterpieces. The problems lie with a script that, clearly relishing the opportunity to use the ruins of Frankfurt and Berlin as thriller backdrops for reasons of excitement as well as enlightenment, still uses a sometimes never-ending off-screen monologue to stop the film dead in its tracks repeatedly and provide exposition and teachable moments in a tone somewhere between hardboiled narration and dry and only mildly clever documentary, informing the audience of 1948 of what one hopes they already knew from their newspapers. It’s a bit of a shame, really, for the shots of ruined cities, the desperate, real-life surrealism of post-war existence in Germany, and the film’s actual plot don’t really need this kind of help at all, providing as they do a much better picture of the world than the narration ever could.

In fact, whenever the big voice from nowhere pauses and allows the plot and the characters to move by their own volition, things turn into an actual Tourneur movie full of shadowy corners, men and women with complicated motives trying to navigate shadows metaphorical and real through thrilling set pieces.


The film really wants to believe what Bernhardt preaches even if the state of the world makes it sound utopian, keeping a bit of hope up even knowing the realities of life. It’s a bit sad looked at from today, too, for humanity clearly has learned little from any of the things Berlin Express is talking about, perpetuating childish squabbling that turns bloody more often than not, even opening doors and podiums to Nazis and their ilk again.

Past Misdeeds: The Flame and the Arrow (1950)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

It's the 12th Century and the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations under Emperor Friedrich I. (aka Barbarossa) controls large parts of Europe, among them the Lombardy in what we now know as Italy. The Lombards are less than enthused about their new masters, and a resistance movement that seems to concentrate on throwing grim glances and urging people to join their cause without ever acting for said cause has come into existence.

Lombard and hunter Dardo (Burt Lancaster) is not into that whole revolution thing, though. The man prefers rugged individualism and sexual promiscuity as long as no feelings are involved (I'm being a bit more straightforward about the latter element of his character than the film can be, but it's as unsubtle about things as a film made in 1950 can be) to social responsibility, though he does take good care of his son Rudi (the atrocious Gordon Gebert) and is the sort of rugged individualist who still has friends like his childhood friend, the mute smith Piccolo (Nick Cravat who was Lancaster's real life partner as a circus acrobat as well as in the movies, and has pretty wonderful chemistry with him). Ironically, Dardo has more reason to hate the Germans than most, for the local potentate, Count Ulrich aka "The Hawk" (Frank Allenby) took Dardo's (consenting) wife as his concubine five years ago, leaving Dardo alone with his son and certain trust issues when it comes to women that do explain his sexual and emotional habits.

Things between Ulrich and Dardo finally come to a head when the hunter quite purposefully shoots one of Ulrich's hunting hawks. In retribution, Ulrich decides that it's best to take Rudi away from his father into his castle to live with his mother. Dardo disapproves of the idea quite violently, but all that gets him is a crossbow bolt in the back and a new status as an outlaw; at least he also learns that he has quite a few friends willing to become outlaws themselves to help him.

The rest of the movie does of course consist of various Robin Hood-like deeds, the difficult romance between Dardo and Ulrich's niece, the much more agreeable Anne de Hesse (Virginia Mayo). Important lessons are learned by the rugged individualist (the social sphere exists and can't and shouldn't be ignored unless you are a total jerk or a hermit) as well as by the lazy revolutionaries (you actually need to get off your ass when you want to get rid of Evil) alike.

Everyone reading this surely knows Jacques Tourneur as a master of subtle horror as well as the film noir, what with little, totally unknown movies like Cat People and Out of the Past on his résumé. As someone working inside the studio system for most of his career, Tourneur did of course direct films in various other genres too. With The Flame and the Arrow, the director created a fine (and pleasantly Technicolor) adventure movie/trapezoidal swashbuckler that isn't quite as deep in the Robin Hood mold as one would expect. Sure, many of the expected elements are there and accounted for, but blacklist victim Waldo Salt's script and Tourneur's sense of style give most of these standard tropes small twists and turns that keep the film more lively and surprising than expected. My description of the movie's "rugged individualism versus social responsibility" theme may sound rather sarcastic, but the film actually does interesting things with it, never forgetting that its characters are supposed to be people and not walking metaphors, which leads to more complexity in the characterisation of especially Dardo and Anne than you'd need in an adventure movie or a film arguing philosophy. As an additional bonus, Salt's script also shows a degree of class consciousness that is more than just a little useful when you want to talk about the Middle Ages yet always comes as a surprise in a US movie. One could even read the whole film as one about class struggle, if one had the intention to do so.

Because Tourneur knows what he's doing, he also never steps into the trap of forgetting The Flame's identity as an adventure movie above its various subtexts. This may be a film that wants to talk about the problems and attractions of rugged individualism but it's also one that wants to show off particularly acrobatic (at this point in his career, certainly still more of a reason why a studio would hire the former acrobat Burt Lancaster than not, as you will know) swashbuckling (historically speaking, it's of course not swashbuckling, but you know what I mean) fights, bad guys acting dastardly, good guys being clever and charming, and women having a mind of their own, in a good-natured and brilliant manner. In Tourneur's hands, this still leaves room for the philosophizing as well as for sudden bouts of directorial brilliance like a certain swordfight taking place in a very Tourneur darkness. Even better, it's a film that knows perfectly well how to do this, how to let its subtext sing and its surface action shine, probably leaving every thinkable audience with as big a smile on its face as it did with me.


My Bollywood-loving friends will perhaps be interested and surely just as delighted as I was to learn The Flame and the Arrow also contains a scene where Lancaster and Cravat disguise themselves as members of a circus troupe to enter Ulrich's castle, with all the non-existing subtlety of disguise you'd see in a Manmohan Desai film. It's a glorious thing even without a musical number. Good taste in plot tropes is obviously as timeless as it is international.

On Exploder Button: The Flame And The Arrow (1950)

Things wise people like in their movies: colour, Jacques Tourneur, Burt Lancaster in an acrobatic mood, class consciousness, derring-do, philosophical subtexts, bad guys hiring a circus troupe.

Things The Flame and the Arrow includes: all of the above.

Ergo, wise people may want to click on through to this week's column on Exploder Button.

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In short: The Leopard Man (1943)

Her manager Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe) persuades nightclub singer Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) to indulge in a publicity stunt with a black leopard as the best method to outdo her main Rival Clo Clo (Margo; whose highly irritating habit of clicking her castanets wherever and whenever she goes did not endear her to me). Not surprisingly, the animal escapes and starts a series of murders. The conscience-stricken Jerry and Kiki soon doubt the leopard's responsibility for the acts. Might there be a more dangerous, human perpetrator?

The Leopard Man is one of the less well known collaborations between producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur and I am not surprised by this.

Of course, the film is well directed, well acted, an obvious product of seasoned professionals who probably were unable to make a shoddy movie. Nonetheless, I couldn't shake the feeling Tourneur and Lewton didn't put as much heart in it as in Cat People. The film just lacks the special spark of creativity I have gotten used to in films produced by Lewton. The film's themes aren't as intelligently developed as one would hope for, and the characters stay rather flat.

In comparison to much of the films the Poverty Row studios produced at the same time its pure competence lets The Leopard Man still look like a minor masterpiece.

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