How to Rent a Backlot
Nightfall (1957)
directed by Jacques Tourneur
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Aldo Ray looks like my mother’s father in a photograph taken during a geological expedition out west (or maybe Canada) before World War II. In the snapshot, my grandfather wears a beard. He could have played professional baseball in Cleveland, but an uncle encouraged him to go to college instead. My grandfather died when I was young. He was a gregarious man who loved The Three Stooges, and when I see him in photographs like the one I’ve described, I can picture a baseball uniform on his tall, stocky frame better than the suits he later wore.
It’s difficult for me to remember my grandfather’s voice, but he almost certainly did not sound like Aldo Ray. Still, I thought about that part of my life once Ray thinks back on a camping trip with a doctor friend from Chicago. Tourneur took the time to find real snow, and the trout Ray fries with butter and breadcrumbs is one of those onscreen meals I’d like to eat for dinner. Aldo Ray is a revelation, and Anne Bancroft in her early twenties on a crowded bus from Los Angeles to Wyoming is so beautiful in the tall seat beside him that you aren’t sure if you remember a rear projection shot like that from a movie or a dream. They meet in a quiet Los Angeles bar, with plush booths and just the right space for an intimate drink.
Plenty of noirs pit a man against the world, but here the pursued protagonist has more friends than he knows. Jacques Tourneur made movies that were closer to tropical weather than anything like a technical exercise. It’s a bad metaphor, but watching them, I’m reminded of soft breezes along the Gulf of Mexico, a coastline I love. Eerie moments and lonely moments appear like mysterious offshore lights or falling stars, but the surf keeps crashing and, danger or no danger, there’s no better sound – and no better director - for a good night’s sleep.
directed by Jacques Tourneur
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Aldo Ray looks like my mother’s father in a photograph taken during a geological expedition out west (or maybe Canada) before World War II. In the snapshot, my grandfather wears a beard. He could have played professional baseball in Cleveland, but an uncle encouraged him to go to college instead. My grandfather died when I was young. He was a gregarious man who loved The Three Stooges, and when I see him in photographs like the one I’ve described, I can picture a baseball uniform on his tall, stocky frame better than the suits he later wore.
It’s difficult for me to remember my grandfather’s voice, but he almost certainly did not sound like Aldo Ray. Still, I thought about that part of my life once Ray thinks back on a camping trip with a doctor friend from Chicago. Tourneur took the time to find real snow, and the trout Ray fries with butter and breadcrumbs is one of those onscreen meals I’d like to eat for dinner. Aldo Ray is a revelation, and Anne Bancroft in her early twenties on a crowded bus from Los Angeles to Wyoming is so beautiful in the tall seat beside him that you aren’t sure if you remember a rear projection shot like that from a movie or a dream. They meet in a quiet Los Angeles bar, with plush booths and just the right space for an intimate drink.
Plenty of noirs pit a man against the world, but here the pursued protagonist has more friends than he knows. Jacques Tourneur made movies that were closer to tropical weather than anything like a technical exercise. It’s a bad metaphor, but watching them, I’m reminded of soft breezes along the Gulf of Mexico, a coastline I love. Eerie moments and lonely moments appear like mysterious offshore lights or falling stars, but the surf keeps crashing and, danger or no danger, there’s no better sound – and no better director - for a good night’s sleep.
posted by NPK at 10:00 AM
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