NIGHTFALL (1956)

This Columbia Pictures release stars Aldo Ray, James Gregory, Anne Bancroft, and Brian Keith. Rudy Bond has a standout role, one of several films he made, three of which starred Marlon Brando. His sister, Jocelyn Brando, plays Gregory’s wife. This fits into the little-known “B+ movie” category because of top-notch performances, solid cinematography, and direction by Jacques Tourneur. His use of seamless flashbacks provides the most interesting segments of this film. However, despite his success with Out of the Past, Tourneur’s directing here can be a little uneven. One cannot fault the studio art department for pumping up the promotion of this seventy-nine-minute film---note the yellow teaser text in the poster.

I found Stirling Silliphant’s script ponderous at times. Many segments go by slowly with a lot of character development dialogue. It took a while to figure out what was up with Ray's character, whether he was innocent or guilty of something. His incessant vague comments about the source of his troubles barely squeeze through. The homey scenes with Gregory revealing to his wife how his insurance investigation is progressing ate up a lot of film for a character we do not need to know that much background. Then, Keith’s extended cat-and-mouse verbal threatening of Ray is also a frame eater. Thankfully, flashbacks make sense of why Ray is being hunted, how he, Keith, and Bond collided, and why the latter two cannot find their stolen loot.

I was not buying “truck-driving” Ray as a freelance commercial artist. I could have supported Bancroft as a Montgomery-Ward catalog model, though not a high fashion model. The novel that the film is based on may be the culprit. Bancroft's first appearance with Ray in a local bar is also a wee cumbersome until thieves and noir-do-wells, Keith and Bond, enter the picture. Their abduction of Ray was not a huge surprise, who thinks Bancroft set him up. 

Keith once again seems to be holding himself back from a sudden outburst of violence. A one-dimensional character played well with clamped jaw. But Bond...Rudy Bond, (second from left above) steals the film as the sadist who enjoys killing people by games of [no] chance. His laugh from an individual with a screw loose upstairs. I imagine him watching Wile E. Coyote cartoons endlessly―as an adult―always laughing hysterically at every pratfall, however repetitive. His demise is well worth waiting for. Then, there is a lot of waiting in this film. Waiting for Ray and Bancroft to become an item. Waiting for Gregory to explain himself to Ray. Waiting for Keith and Bond to come to an understanding and waiting for that snowplow to make itself useful. 

BEHIND THE HIGH WALL (1956)

You will want to overlook the familiar script in this Universal-International production. Just enjoy the superb acting of the lead actors. It is another prison break story of a good guy gone bad, destroyed by temptation, and a doomed driveway. More about the latter, later.

Accomplices on the outside facilitate a prison escape, kill a guard and kidnap the warden, Tom Tully, and force an inmate, John Gavin, to accompany them. A car crash kills everyone except the aforementioned. Considering their short screen time, the other actors were just happy to be paid scale. Before the police arrive, Tully buries the gang's money with a plan to finally live in financial peace. If that is not dishonest enough, he shamefully attempts to pin the guard’s murder on Gavin by uncomfortably never coming to his defense.

Flawlessly, Tully catapults from supporting to lead actor without a hitch. He is excellent as a prison warden with financial problems, a crippled wife, and decisions that change his life through layers of lies. Tully’s understated and subtle performance―his tender voice when trying to comfort his wife―reflected an actor of great range. Sylvia Sidney's role as the wheelchair-bound wife seems a good choice. An interesting detail is that she is able to drive her car equipped with handicap controls. Sidney's flexibility as an actress attests to her longevity and was never confused with any of her more attractive peers. Even though her wrinkles had multiplied twelve-fold―oddly, still wheelchair-bound―she carried on forty years later as a loopy grandma in Mars Attacks!

John Gavin gives a solid performance but the handsome actor, with a face fresh from a J.C. Leyendecker's Arrow Shirt illustration, seems out of place in this role of a down-and-out loser. With his snarling upper lip, Elvis Presley would have worked better. If Gavin was ideally cast, then his girlfriend should have been Elizabeth Taylor and not Betty Lynn, playing Tully's daughter. She was attractively cute but not a classic beauty. For the record, I have no idea who the lady in the poster with the red skirt is since she was not in this movie. But her face, if not her hair color, has an uncanny resemblance to Miss Taylor. Just sayin'.

The dependable and versatile actor, John Larch, is on hand as a prison inmate who sticks close to Gavin until the end, implausible as it is. In order to flush out both men hiding in Tully's garage, he confesses his sin over a bullhorn―in the formerly quiet neighborhood―and testifies to Gavin's innocence. Larch wants no part in any surrender and blasts through the garage door without opening it, hitting Tully in his escape. How anyone so near the garage―on that driveway of doom―could not hear the engine start and accelerate is beyond reasoning.