Out Of The Past (1947)

Film: Out Of The Past

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Country: France

Released: November 1947

Runtime: 97 minutes

Genre: Film Noir

Studio: RKO

Influenced: Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Curtis Hanson

Out of the Past was by far the greatest film of 1947 and should have romped home with every award going, but it slipped below the Oscars radar and has maintained cult classic status ever since. It's arguably the greatest of all film noirs, and a notable fact is that the director was a Frenchman, Jacques Tourneur. Europeans were responsible for some of the finest early films in this quintessentially American genre, particularly German directors Robert Siodmak (creator of the excellent 1946 film noir, The Killers) and Fritz Lang.

Tourneur had a fine cast at his disposal, with the film starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas. Mitchum is perfectly cast as Jeff Markham, a private detective who's hired to investigate the shady past of Kathie Moffat, the former lover of Whit Sterling, a ruthless mobster played with panache by Kirk Douglas. Jane Greer is equally impressive as Moffat, the femme fatale whose softness and beauty mask a lurid past. Markham's investigation leads him to Mexico and into a web of crime and deceit, and Mitchum's performance delivered in his deep, laconic voice is understated yet powerful throughout, conveying a man who's been hardened by experience yet still retains a sense of humanity.

In the Mexico scenes, voiceover narration is used quite liberally, a standard film noir trope. Apparently Daniel Mainwaring's original script was not very good, and an early draft featured awful voiceover narration by the deaf-mute character Jimmy. According to sources, James M Cain's total rewrite of the script was even worse and got discarded. The film's sharp dialogue and well-drawn characters were actually the work of Frank Fenton, an English-born B-movie screenwriter who went on to pen the script for John Ford's Wings of Eagles (1957).

Out of the Past's visual style is impressive, with Tourneur's use of shadow creating a sense of atmosphere and tension, enhanced by iconic shots such as the opening scene of Markham's car driving towards the camera. The movie's score is also perfectly attuned to the film, creating a mood of suspense, while the casting was laudably inclusive for the time, including Dickie Moore's portrayal of the deaf-mute mechanic assistant's Jimmy and the scene in the black jazz club. 

Another notable innovation is how the women in this film are literally femme fatales, in this case actual murderers or accessories to murder. Also, as the film's title suggests, Out of the Past is an early example of a film where a character’s criminal past comes back to haunt them (a favourite modern film of mine with a similar theme is David Cronenberg's A History of Violence), while its ending is deliberately ambiguous – did Jimmy tell the truth about Jeff’s intentions to Ann? Or is he telling what he thinks will be best for her to believe?