Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

country and city, expressed by means of flashbacks; both heroes in the films, James
Vanning and Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), try to escape from their past situation by
relocating somewhere else and changing their names; and in both films, the hero tries to
defeat his destiny by returning to his previous identity. The major difference though is that
unlike Jeff, Vanning manages to maintain his innocence and survives his ordeal.
Perhaps for all these reasons, the film was described by Spencer Selby as “a
paranoid thriller which seems to be Tourneur’s return to some of the territory he explored
in Out of the Past” (Selby 1997:166). On the whole, Nightfall benefits from a firm script
by Stirling Silliphant, fine performances with some very good dialogues, and superb
cinematography by Burnett Guffey, notably his most striking end sequence (the film ends
with the loot bag sitting on those bright snow-covered mountains of Wyoming – fig. 99)
that possibly provided a clue for the ending of the Coen brothers’ Fargo (1996).
Figure 99. Nightfall
Despite being released towards the end of the noir cycle, Nightfall continues to
stress the predicament of the noir protagonist, his paranoia about current events and how
much he is a victim of an implacable fate. These key extended flashback sequences explain
the reasons for Vanning’s present situation, reflecting his struggle to make out how such
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