Rod Sedgwick’s review published on Letterboxd:
''Let's go down to the bar. We can cool off while we try to impress each other.''
One would be hard pressed to name a more effective example of film noir than Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past and it's all served up on a silver platter; hard-boiled, double-talking detective (Robert Mitchum), seductive femme fatale (Jane Greer), girlfriend with a heart of gold (Virginia Huston), the slick and slippery gangster (Kirk Douglas), a tangled web of a plot that requires full attention to grasp (thanks Wikipedia plot synopsis), shadowy photography and lots of cigarette smoke.
Tourneur brings his Cat People cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca along for the ride and together they manage to capture the true essence of the genre in adapting Geoffery Homes 'Build My Gallows High'. Mitchum's Jeff Bailey is wonderfully conceived as a retired detective with a past whose closet contains skeletons that refuse to sleep and through flashbacks we are drawn into a serpentine plot of murder and greed, but what took me by surprise the most was the subversive ending and how it played out. Greer is a sumptuous delight as the woman that could derail any full blooded man's best intentions and Douglas is quite suited to his archetypical character, but the whole cast shine in managing to skilfully wrap their lips around the delicious dialogue and present it for our aural pleasure.
Out of the Past may not be quite as interesting to me as some of Tourneur's more horror tinged drama's, and most likely a film I might find more rewarding upon a second viewing, in order to grasp the intricacies of the plot, but one thing is for sure; it is an exquisite example of an artist knowing how to get the most the genre he is working within. Now I need to go outside for some fresh air after all that cigarette smoke.