Now that Robert Redford is hot again with All Is Lost, it’s worth recalling his first stirring and commendable filmed performance. He played a kind and gentle-mannered Mr. Death in “Nothing In The Dark,” a 1962 Twilight Zone episode that was written by George Clayton Johnson and directed by Lamont Johnson. Redford’s big payoff (“Am I really so bad?”) begins around 7:45 and continues to the end. NITD is not some historic, rip-roaring teleplay, but it’s probably the most compassionate drama about death ever aired on American mainstream television. And R.G. Armstrong‘s performance as a kindly demolition man isn’t chopped liver either.
