Nightfall

Jim, working as a commercial artist in Los Angeles, is being followed by two bank robbers and an insurance investigator. The reason is an accident while camping in Wyoming: one of the robbers shot him by mistake, the bags were switched, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars went missing in the snow. Nobody disbelieves that Jim hid the money. Jacques Tourneur adapted David Goodis's novel and moved noir out of the usual dark city into a field of white snow, and putting the danger in the light is the film's best idea. Aldo Ray plays the innocent man heavy and tired, and Anne Bancroft appears early in her career. It is short, tightly cut, with clear flashbacks. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties noir and Tourneur's use of light. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a complicated mystery, since the solution is visible from the start.