1947 Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, CA. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.
Robert Mitchum Jane Greer Kirk Douglas Rhonda Fleming Richard Webb Steve Brodie Virginia Huston Paul Valentine Dickie Moore Ken Niles Mary Field Oliver Blake Harry Hayden Theresa Harris Frank Wilcox John Kellogg Brooks Benedict Homer Dickenson Mike Lally Bill Wallace Eumenio Blanco Victor Romito Wesley Bly Mildred Boyd James Bush James Conaty Alphonso DuBois Rudy Germane Adda Gleason Show All…
Build My Gallows High, Retorno al pasado, De greep van het verleden, От миналото, Fanget af fortiden, Varjot menneisyydestä, La griffe du passé, Αμαρτωλοί και δολοφόνοι, Kísért a múlt, Le catene della colpa, Czlowiek z przeszloscia, Din trecut, Skuggor ur det förflutna, Fuga ao Passado, Fuga do Passado, Goldenes Gift, かこをのがれて, Retorn al passat, Pryč od minulosti, La Griffe du passé, סיפור מהעבר, 過去を逃れて, 과거로부터, Człowiek z przeszłością, O Arrependido, Из прошлого, Geçmişten Kaçış, З минулого, 漩涡之外
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The first thing that happens in this movie is a guy throws a cigarette at a deaf kid. About a minute later Robert Mitchum throws a cigarette at him. That’s just what it’s like in the economy of cigarettes. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.
I was supposed to watch this for Cinema 101 in my first semester of college and for some reason skipped the screening. I was an idiot.
the hays code cut from the kiss on the shoulder to the door swinging open in the wind to the rain outside is one of the most sensational things I've ever seen.
wandering the frame in search of a picture. history doomed to repeat itself. "build my gallows high, baby."
89/100
For a film so indelibly involved in the lost rivers of memory, Out of the Past confounds because of its ever-present feeling within the now. Every frame feels like the mistakes and the pain of the past will reach out and strangle our main characters, but that never stops the main mystery from propelling forward with impeccable fluidity. The chemistry between Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer is some of the finest to ever emerge out of the film-noir genre, with the two crafting conversations of moving honesty and sparkling sensuality.
The atmosphere that they're surrounded in, with Nicholas Musuraca conjuring haunting imagery as DP, only cements the fact that Jacques Tourneur was a master of looming terror. Out of the Past, with its hard-boiled corruption and its sexy otherworldly rhythms, is quite possibly the finest horror film that Jacques ever directed. It is film-noir at its most crystalline and pure, and you won't soon forget it.
"Spontaneity? Bullshit!" - Daniele Huillet
Of the Tourneur films I've seen, each one drops you into the movie with such little exposition that it feels like we're watching the ending. Tourneur will then choose to exploit your anxiety about the fact that you have absolutely no idea what is going on. Unlike most of his work, it's easy to forget that this is a conventional structure for Tourneur, because as convoluted as it is, at least it has a plot. But JT uses this convolution to his advantage: we sense the feeling of "fatedness" common in all of his other work. Here it's by Mitchum constantly being a pawn in something he (and we) do not fully understand. There is…
Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past is quite simply one of the most outstanding films within the film noir genre. Yet strangely, Tourneur is not more widely regarded when film noirs are discussed despite directing three solid examples of the style within four years during the nineteen forties. He is often merely reflected upon for his B-movies at RKO, including the distinguished Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie; however, he undoubtedly was one of the most outstanding genre directors of his day, and even turned his hand to a few westerns.
This is a well-executed and compelling film, with remarkably and cleverly concise dialogue which is both playful and highly quotable. It's built around the idea that sometimes there's no…
"Which place was your favorite?"
"This one right here."
"I bet you say that to all the places."
If you ask me what’s the greatest noir, I’ll automatically answer Out of the Past. This is a pretty standard opinion among the cognoscenti. But I’d love some day to be able to properly articulate why I think it is. I suspect it’s the alchemy of Jacques Tourneur’s direction and Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography plus Frank Fenton’s and James M. Cain’s catgut-tight dialogue that encapsulates the ineluctable fatalism at the core of film noir:
Jane Greer: “Is there any way to win?”
Robert Mitchum: “There’s a way to lose more slowly,”
Daaaaamn! We are getting dangerously close to the absolute mountain summit of noir with this one.
I loved this. Few directors sell the affected vibe of noir while burying its inherent artifice like Tourneur. Wilder may have broke open the genre, but here Tourneur teaches him a thing or two about the power of subtlety.
And few actors deliver that overripe dialogue as naturally and free of pretensions as Mitchum. In his mouth it's somehow more singsong AND more matter-of-fact (at the same time) than virtually any other actor tasked with selling lines like this:
Kathie (Greer): I don't want to die.
Jeff (Mitchum): Neither do I baby, but if I have to, I'm going to die last.
There's not…
