From the brightest days of film noir in the past comes this adaptation of Daniel Mainwaring’s novel Build My Gallows High that would set the bar for excellence in noir high for its successors. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, Out of the Past (1947) defines classic noir at its finest.
The movie’s plot follows the protagonist Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), a gas station owner in a small town in California, who has a second name and a shady past. While hired by a gang leader Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) for an assignment, Bailey fell for Sterling’s ex Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) until they had to split while she was on the run from Sterling. Now Sterling wants Bailey for another assignment while Bailey has moved on to find love in a good girl named Ann (Virginia Huston), unaware that both Kathie and more trouble lie ahead of him.
It’s probably as difficult to find a flaw with Out of the Past as a noir as it is to fully explore its merits in all its perfection. The plot with all its turns, the characters big and small, all the dialogues, and the cinematography along with the background music are done to the best of talent and the finest of taste in the genre. The screen chemistry between Robert Mitchum as the vulnerable private eye and Jane Greer as the femme fatale is out of this world.
Great noir usually ends with a final twist hidden from the people on the screen but visible to the viewer. Tourneur nails it with his ending of the story by a gesture of the Kid (Dickie Moore) using no words. It plays a special note on the viewer’s heartstrings.
Out of the Past could easily pass for the textbook case of a noir done right to perfection. If you can pick only one movie from the year 1947, look no further!
