Out of the Past established the screen personae of both Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, and in the underrated Jane Greer, Past gave the world the prototype noir villainess.
Out of the Past Listed on Library of Congress' Prestigious National Registry of Films
RKO’s Out of the Past was not considered a great artistic triumph on its 1947 release. But by 1991, when the picture was named to the Library of Congress’ National Registry, it had reached near-legendary status, thanks to rediscovery by later generations of movie scholars, fans and especially filmmakers, who considered it among the greatest of all noirs.
In his running commentary on the Warner Home Video DVD release, film noir scholar James Ursini calls Out of the Past a perfect example of the genre, equal to noir classics Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet. Ursini cites the film's incorporation of all of noir’s basic elements, including use of light and shadow, highly symbolic shot composition and angles, and in particular, the complexity of flawed characters and their suspect motivations.
The film’s theme is inferred in the title: you can’t escape your past – sooner or later it returns for you. Robert Mitchum’s character, Jeff Bailey, seems almost resigned to this; his early stoic surrender infuses his character with a nearly mythic pathos.
Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas Owed Their Screen Images to Out of the Past
The film rewrote Mitchum’s career, helping change his good-guy screen persona to one more complex, brooding and shaded, in line with his off-camera reputation as a rebel. The image remained with Mitchum the rest of his career.
Similarly, co-star Kirk Douglas, in just his second film role (after playing a weakling in his debut, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers), secured his own enduring movie persona in Past. Douglas packed up his intense, hyper-aggressive character and revisited him in one form or another for 60 years. In a nicely layered performance as the scheming gambler Whit, Douglas is ostensibly friendly to Mitchum's Bailey while retaining an edge, a menace to his madness, near the surface.
Then-22-year-old Jane Greer plays Whit’s femme fatale moll, Kathie Moffat. Offscreen, she was girlfriend to RKO owner Howard Hughes at the time. Connections aside, Greer absolutely was up to playing the challenging role.
Jane Greer Among Screen's Great Villainesses in Out of the Past
“Along with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity,” Ursini notes in his DVD commentary, “[Greer] is probably the most important of the [noir genre's] femme fatales, influencing people all the way down to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown.”
Out of the Past glides between the present day of 1947 and flashback to tell the dark tale of former private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum).
Bailey has a modest service station in the idyllic town of Bridgeport, nestled in the foothills of the California Sierras. When he’s evasive with his sweet-natured girlfriend Ann, we quickly realize he has a past. That shady personal history is recounted when Bailey is summoned to a Lake Tahoe meeting with Whit (Douglas).
His back story is revealed in a lengthy flashback. Three years earlier, Whit sent Bailey to retrieve a girlfriend, Kathie, who'd shot him and made off with $40,000. Bailey traced her to Acapulco and – no big surprise here – they became involved. She denied stealing the money and, well, she certainly seemed sincere.
To elude Whit, the couple boards a steamship to San Francisco, where their romance continues undisturbed – until Jeff’s former associate shows up, demanding money for his silence. He’s not around long because cold-eyed Kathie shoots him dead and runs off. Left behind in her purse is a bankbook revealing a recent $40,000 deposit.
The devastated Jeff has three years to forget her – until Whit sits him down at the gambler's Lake Tahoe retreat. That's when Kathie coolly walks in the room, apparently having returned to Whit after the shooting. Whit’s new plans draw Jeff and Kathie together again, and the complex, twisty plot gives the principals plenty of room for obsessive love, betrayals and gunplay.
Out of the Past Locations Include Mexico, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Bridgeport
Besides Past, director Jacques Tourneur is best remembered for three of producer Val Lewton’s great horror pictures at RKO. His masterly visual style is all over this film. Tourneur's compositions are gorgeous and the symbolism throughout subtle but effective. For example, Ursini notes a night beach scene in which Jeff and Kathie kiss for the first time. Sailboat netting is visible throughout the shot, nicely suggesting the trap Kathie represents. A spider web kind of thing.
Tourneur shot most interiors on RKO’s soundstages in Hollywood. But the film makes liberal use of actual locations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Acapulco and the real town of Bridgeport, California.
Daniel Mainwaring Wrote the Screenplay, Based on His Novel
The intricately-plotted screenplay was written by Daniel Mainwaring (under the name Geoffrey Homes), based on his novel, Build My Gallows High. And beyond the careful structure, Mainwaring’s script features countless great lines. Like when Jeff tells Kathie, “You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.”
Or, when Kathie tells him, “I don’t want to die,” Jeff responds, “Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I’m gonna die last.”
Even the book's bitterly ironic title gets tossed in, when Jeff drawls lazily, "Build my gallows high, baby."
Without the cynical dialogue, the script gives the players plenty of room to believe and deceive each other. Greer, whose career sadly never fully developed, is so good in the role you can never tell when she’s being truthful about wanting to be with Jeff.
Mitchum’s sotto voce, sad-eyed fatalism is also a career-making turn.
Against All Odds Remake Starred Jeff Bridges in Mitchum Role
Out of the Past was respectably remade in 1984 as Against All Odds, with Jeff Bridges in Mitchum’s role, Australian Rachel Ward as the femme fatale and James Woods cast appropriately as the gangster. In a nice bit of stunt casting, Jane Greer was on hand, in a significant new role created for her.
However, more than 60 years after its release, the original is still a superior film. The moody story of crime, passion and betrayal ranks among the best noirs. If you need an introduction to this rich, uniquely American movie genre, start with this film.
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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