Nightfall

Nightfall (1956) is Jacques Tourneur's lean film noir, available to watch online on iFILM. Commercial artist Jim Vanning is lying low in the big city: he's been framed for a murder and robbery he never committed, and he keeps piecing together, step by step, how it all came crashing down on him.

A chance run-in with two gunmen up in the snowy mountains left him holding a bag of stolen bank cash — and then the bag vanished in the drifts. Now the killers want it back, a patient insurance investigator wants answers, and a model named Marie (Anne Bancroft) drifts into his life without him knowing whether to trust her. The script is drawn from a David Goodis novel, a writer who specialized in cornered, desperate men.

Tourneur, the man behind I Walked with a Zombie and Out of the Past, shoots it spare and jittery, making snow-blasted peaks feel as menacing as any dark alley. Seventy-nine tight minutes, no fat — an underrated noir for genre lovers. Stream Nightfall (1956) online on iFILM.