NFR Project: 'Out of the Past' (1947)

 

NFR Project: “Out of the Past”

Dir: Jacques Tourneur

Scr: “Geoffrey Holmes” (Daniel Mainwaring), James M. Cain, Frank Fenton

Pho: Nicholas Musuraca

Ed: Samuel E. Beetley

Premiere: Nov. 25, 1947

97 min.

This is the hardest of all hard-boiled film noirs, with crackling dialogue, plenty of angst, and the most impassive hero of the genre – the great Robert Mitchum.

The incredibly strong script, combined with the talent of director Jacques Tourneur, son of the great silent director Maurice Tourneur, makes this movie a stark meditation on greed and fear and delusion. Add to this Nicholas Musuraca’s exquisite cinematography, and you have a movie that still shines and compels, decades after its creation.

Here Mitchum plays the taciturn Jeff Bailey, a small-town gas station owner who is recognized by a passing thug and ordered to report to a crime boss, Whit Sterling (a delightfully frightening Kirk Douglas in a breakout role), we know not why. Jeff is attracted to a nice girl in town, and on their way to see Sterling he confesses to her his past.

We are swept into an extended flashback. Jeff was a private eye, hired by Sterling to track down a young woman who shot him and stole $40,000 from him. This Jeff does, traveling down to Mexico. There he finds who he is looking for – Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). Unfortunately, he almost immediately falls in love with her. Ignoring his mission, he plans to get away with her.

Sterling surprises him in Mexico, and he barely gets free of him without revealing his alliance with Kathie. He and Kathie move to San Francisco . . . where he is spotted by his former partner, now working for Sterling. He follows them and tries to shake them down. Kathie shoots him dead. Jeff and Kathie split up and flee.

Back in the present, Jeff arrives at Sterling’s place and finds Kathie there. She claims that she had no choice but to return to Sterling, and that she couldn’t help murdering Jeff’s old partner. (She smokes; he smokes; everybody smokes in this movie, all the time. The characters are always seen through a fog of cigarette smoke.)

Scornful and bitter, Jeff takes on a job for Sterling involving stopping a blackmailer. Jeff suspects that he is being set up to take the rap for the blackmailer’s murder; he is correct. Kathie is out to eliminate him and save herself. He outfoxes Sterling and Kathie, staying one jump ahead of them, but not before Kathie guns Sterling down and blackmails Jeff into leaving with her. Jeff agrees, but maeks a phone call we are not privy to.

Jeff and Kathie are stopped by a police roadblock. Kathie realizes Jeff has called the cops on her and shoots him to death. The cops kill Kathie. The “good girl” Jeff was enamored of asks his deaf-mute employee, the Kid, if Jeff was really planning on fleeing with Kathie. The Kid lies and indicates yes, sparing her feelings.

It’s not so much the twisting of the plot that is remarkable about this film – it’s the characters. Sterling is a genial, relaxed maniac who compliments his guests in one sentence and promises them a slow, painful death with the next. Jane Greer’s Kathie is a ravishing monster – incredibly beautiful, she lies with every breath she takes, making every move only to protect herself and advance her own interests. She is the perfect femme fatale.

It’s Mitchum who anchors the film, though. His droll indifference to the lies, the schemes, the twists and turns of the other players at first seems too monotone to be believed. However, watch Mitchum’s face closely. It reveals his subtle and complex feelings and state of mind at every instant, disguised under a sleepy-eyed, sarcastic demeanor. Jeff has a sense of honor, but he is also wise to himself. In the end, he delivers himself and Kathie to the fate they deserve. He is doomed, but he is resigned to his fate.

And the dialogue! “I don’t want to die.” “Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I’m going to die last.”

“She can’t be all bad. No one is.” “Well, she comes the closest.”

“You can never help anything, can you? You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.”

Jeff is so self-aware that his observations border on parody. He is bemused by everything, and makes light of all going on around him. His death is a tragedy, inevitable. All the plans the characters make come to nothing, and we are only slightly mollified by the film’s ending. Only we the audience know that at heart, Jeff was a good guy.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Way of Peace.