Out of the Past conjures dark film noir magic at The Cinematheque August 18 and 24
Robert Mitchum’s jaded P.I., Jane Greer’s enigmatic femme fatale, and a swirl of cigarette smoke
Jane Greer plays femme fatale to Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past.
The Cinematheque presents Out of the Past on August 18 at 8:30 pm and August 24 at 6:30 pm; Film Noir 2023 continues to September 4
JACQUES TOURNEUR’S 1947 film Out of the Past is a perfectly crafted tale of a man whose dark past catches up with him—and the reasons to catch it at The Cinematheque’s summerlong Film Noir 2023 series begin with the fact the role launched Robert Mitchum’s career.
In fact, he ranks with Humphrey Bogart as a hard-boiled private eye, with his weary eyes and jaded voice, a smoke perpetually dangling from his lip. Here, in a story he tells through flashback, he’s pumping gas in small-town California, trying to start a new life, when he’s drawn back into his old gangster ways.
A young Kirk Douglas practically leaps off the screen as the ruthless crime boss Whit. He hires Mitchum’s Jeff to track down his mistress, who’s fled with 40 grand. Add Jane Greer as Kathie Moffatt, one of the most unforgettable femme fatales of all time—one whose motives are beautifully enigmatic. Greer gets one of the greatest movie entrances of all time. “And then I saw her, coming out of the sun, and I knew why Whit didn't care about that forty grand,” Mitchum says, in one of Out of the Past’s uncountable great lines. Later: “I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoke.”
Cigarette smoke, by the way, is like another character in the film—swirling threateningly between Douglas and Mitchum, and catching the moonlight in near-hallucinatory ways in other scenes. Watch the way cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (who also shot Tourneur’s iconic Cat People) captures faces against the dark, making especially sophisticated play of film noir’s shadows and light.
Add atmospheric vintage settings—from San Fran to Acapulco ("It was a nice little joint with bamboo furniture and Mexican gimcracks. One little lamp burned. It was all right. And the rain hammering like that on the window made it good to be in there"), and you have a classic that deserves viewing on the big screen.
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