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Out of the Past
Archetypal Noir
1947
Review: February 19, 2006
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas
Up to you.
THE SETUP:
Guy is sent to retrieve sultry dame, has affair with her, thus ending up a target of his boss. Dirty double-dealings ensue.
DISCUSSION:
I had been aware that this is considered one of the top ten [maybe top five?] noir movies of all time, and since I knew it was directed by jacques Tourneur [of Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie fame] I began to be pretty interested in seeing it. Plus I had watched a lot of crap lately, and it was time to watch something decent.
The movie begins with a setup so archetypal it appers in A History of Violence, in which our hero has changed his name and opened a business in a small town, and is dating a nice girl. A thug from his past shows up, demanding that he go see his old boss. Then we have an extended flashback to “The Past” of the title, in which Mitchum is hired by Kirk Douglas to find Jane Greer, who shot him and took off with $40,000.
So Mitchum goes to Acapulco, where he soon finds the sultry Greer and they almost immediately begin having an affair. They’re planning on running away together when Douglas shows up, and they know they have to split. Things get worse, there’s some dirty double dealing, and we come back to the prsent day.
To tell you any more would spoil the many pleasurable surprises of the movie. Now, I haven’t seen a great deal of film noir, so this one didn’t have far to go to leap into first place as the best noir I have ever seen. Of course the photography is stunning, full of wonderful textures and shadows, but I was surprised by the depth of the story and the complexity of the characters and their psychologies. I listened to the commentary track on the disc, which focuses mainly on what features mark this film as a classic noir, and he [some film historian] said that in-depth psychology was one of the classic hallmarks of noir—not something I would have guessed heretofore. Anyway, in this one the Mitchum character is a bit of a moral drifter, rarely taking an interest in much except saving his own skin. It’s also interesting, in light of what he KNOWS must happen, that he pushes so hard to get involved with Greer’s character. She is also presented as psychologically willowy, always saying that she “can’t help” what she does. I was quite surprised how complicated the story got [another hallmark of noir, apparently], and the sheer number of characters involved. We’re talking some Dovsteyevsky shit here with the number of characters. Christ.
Anyway, it’s quite good. If you’re into noir of course you’ve already seen it, but if new to it, this would be an excellent place to start—or at least that’s what I hear.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yes, it is considered a classic of Noir, and lives up to its reputation in every way.
RELATED MOVIES:
CAT PEOPLE is Jacques Tourneur’s first movie, a classic of early horror, with a fascinating subtext of female sexuality as a destructive force.
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE is Tourneur’s next, with an even more intricate and fascinating subtext, as well as excellent, creepy scenes, and if one of my favorite films of all time.
THE LEOPARD MAN is his last with RKO horror, and while it has wonderful sequences, is the least of his horror films.
