Out of the Past

It had been years since I last saw this film, but The Younger Son put it in to watch over lunch one day recently and I joined in. Out of the Past is a 1947 film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie). It stars Robert Mitchum, a favorite of mine, and Kirk Douglas as a sleazy bad guy. We think Klingons would like this film because everybody dies and nobody makes a profit. This movie is well worth watching and is good for many repeat viewings.

I think this is one of Mitchum's best, and Kirk Douglas is also priceless.

trailer:



Bright Lights Film Journal calls it "riveting" and says it is "usually ranked as one of the best of the genre". Images Journal says it is "An essential noir and one of the great archetypal noirs." FilmReference.com says,

there is little dispute that the particular combination of talents displayed in Out of the Past —significant among them the iconic screen presences of Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Greer— resulted in a distinguished contribution to another genre tradition, film noir , for which Out of the Past has become ... a primary measure of excellence and source of resonance.

It's one of Time's 100 Best Films, where they say, "It has the smartest dialogue and the most persuasively labyrinthine plot of any film noir". DVD Talk opens with this:

In every genre or category of movies there are films that transcend academic pigeonholing, and Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past is a prime example. One leaves a screening of this doomed romance with a profound appreciation of a key awareness behind film noir: Disillusion and despair in a corrupt but seductive world.

The book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die says it "may be the masterpiece of film noir" and that it "leaves us with the enigmas of fatal desires, the ambiguities of loves faced with fear". Roger Ebert has it on his list of "great movies," calling it "one of the greatest of all film noirs". Rotten Tomatoes gives it a critics score of 96%.