Film noir enthusiasts often agree that if one movie were to be selected to define the genre, it would have to be Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past. As a critic so succinctly put it, “With its doomed anti-hero, conniving villain, sardonic script, moody black-and-white photography, and icy femme fatale”, Out of the Past “is essential film noir.” World-weary former gumshoe, now running a gas store in a small town and settled in a stable relationship with a local girl, finds the hard way (in a manner quite akin to A History of Violence) that one can not really shake off one’s dark past, as he gets thrown into a web of deceit, double crosses and murder. Robert Mitchum, in one of his earlier starring roles, is quite magnificent as the tragic anti-hero; Kirk Douglas’ turn as an unctuous and creepy gangster is a terrific indicator of his volatile energy and a great precursor to his amazing performance in An Ace in the Hole. The pivot for the plot, though, is the beautiful Jane Greer, whose femme fatale in the garb of a damsel in distress takes the two guys for a ride and makes big-time suckers out of them. Though quite surprisingly for a film noir the narrative isn’t in the first person (except in the extremely well crafted flashback sequence), cynical and hard-edged dialogues, the taut and twisting storyline and an inexorably gloomy atmosphere, nonetheless, have made this brilliantly photographed classic a seminal and quintessential case study for this iconic genre.
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Genre: Film Noir/Crime Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Romance/Mystery
Language: English
Country: US
