Out of the Past (1947)

A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses and duplicitous dames.

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Writers:

Daniel Mainwaring (screen play by) (as Geoffrey Homes), Daniel Mainwaring (based on his novel "Build My Gallows High") (as Geoffrey Homes)

Stars:

Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas

1 win.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Robert Mitchum	...	Jeff
Jane Greer	...	Kathie
Kirk Douglas	...	Whit
Rhonda Fleming	...	Meta Carson
Richard Webb	...	Jim
Steve Brodie	...	Fisher
Virginia Huston	...	Ann
Paul Valentine	...	Joe
Dickie Moore	...	The Kid
Ken Niles	...	Eels

Storyline

Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story. Flashback: Once, Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco, where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling. Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed.

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Plot Keywords:

secret past | double cross | national film registry | day for night | assumed name | 

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Taglines:

A guy without a fortune! A girl with too much past!

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Romance | Thriller

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer were teamed again for the RKO noir film The Big Steal (1949). While at first glance it might seem like a natural follow-up to the success of this film, Mitchum and Greer were paired up again only after very trying circumstances. Originally Lizabeth Scott, on loan from Paramount and Hal B. Wallis, was to star opposite Mitchum in the film, which had been set to start production in October of 1948. On August 31, however, Mitchum was arrested in Los Angeles on marijuana possession charges. Howard Hughes had acquired RKO just a month prior and decided to rush production and start shooting The Big Steal (1949) as soon as Mitchum was out on bail. Then Scott dropped out of the film, so Greer was brought in only at the last minute. Later, production on the film was halted for two months as Mitchum served his sentence. Daniel Mainwaring worked on the script for the film, which was directed by Don Siegel.

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Goofs

When Jeff looks at Ann as she drives away from Whit's place he is standing at an angle perpendicular to the gate, but on the next cut he now has his back to the gate.

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Quotes

Whit: Well, you told me about your business. Mine is a little more precarious and I earn considerably more.
Jeff: So I've heard.
Whit: So has the government.
Jeff: Well, this may sound ridiculous, but you could pay 'em.
Whit: Oh, that would be against my nature.

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Alternate Versions

Also available in a computer colorized version.

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Connections

Referenced in Norm Macdonald Has a Show: Michael Keaton (2018)

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Soundtracks

The First Time I Saw You
(uncredited)
Music by Nathaniel Shilkret
From The Toast of New York (1937)
Used as main theme in score

User Reviews

A desert island movie

How do I love it? Let me count the ways...First, like a few perfect jazz albums, OUT OF THE PAST has a distinctive, coherent sound developed through various moods and tempos and melodies. Robert Mitchum is the lead soloist who dominates the score; the sound of the film is his sound, cool and weary and knowing. Though he doesn't sing in this one, no performance better demonstrates Mitchum's musicality, his sense of rhythm, pace and inflection. He referred to his dialogue as "the lyrics," and treated it that way, delivering his lines behind the beat, the way Sinatra sings. Jane Greer contributes her gorgeous dry contralto and Kirk Douglas adds a light, sneering counterpoint to an inspired group improvisation on the theme of disillusionment.

Mitchum is Jeff Markham, alias Jeff Bailey, an ex-private eye who made a big mistake by falling for Kathie (Jane Greer), the gangster's mistress he was hired to track down. Splitting up after he discovers she's a liar and a killer, he hides out in a small town, taking up with a nice girl named Ann, knowing it's just a matter of time before the past catches up with him. His narration and dialogue carry the film along on a laid-back high, like a series of perfect smoke rings. He sums up his philosophy of life in a casino when Kathie asks, "Is there a way to win?" and he answers, "There's a way to lose more slowly." When she says she's sorry the man she shot didn't die, he murmurs dreamily, "Give him time." His enveloping pessimism is strangely elated; Jeff knows the score and savors it like some private hipster knowledge. "She can't be all bad. No one is," Jeff's nice girlfriend says of Kathie, but he returns, "She comes closest."

Kathie Moffat is the greatest of all femmes fatales, because she's the least caricatured. She's not a scheming black widow, just a totally selfish, cowardly woman who feels no remorse for anything she does, and who happens to be beautiful and alluring enough that we can believe any man, even a smart and tough one, would fall for her. Jeff and Kathie's romance is genuinely rhapsodic, nothing like the usual mating of temptress and chump; they're both so sexy and smart and wised-up, always getting the joke together. The disillusionment wouldn't be so compelling if the illusion weren't so lovely. When Kathie shoots Jeff's partner, Mitchum—in a reaction shot lasting all of two seconds—shows Jeff realizing, and instantaneously coming to terms with, the fact that the best thing that ever happened to him is also the worst thing that ever happened to him. He looks simultaneously shocked to the core, and as though he'd expected it all along.

Jeff Bailey is a paradox: you'd think nobody could put anything over on this guy, yet he acts like a sucker; he exemplifies both cynical pride and romantic blindness. Does he know what he's getting into and deliberately delude himself? Is he drawn to Kathie because she can rouse him from his torpor of indifference, because he can only really care about his life when he's in danger of losing it? You're never sure, but Mitchum knows how to hold your interest without explaining himself. His essential "Mitchumness" lies in hidden depths, those hints of melancholy, amusement and cold violence that seep through his impassive surface, the suggestions of menace and compassion and old wounds. He gives the movie a core of mystery that's eternally captivating. Like great American popular music, it's sublime hokum, so well-crafted that it stays eternally fresh and means more to you the more you hear it.

Here is a world in which every throwaway gesture—ordering a cup of coffee, checking a briefcase—has drop-dead style, every word spoken is a wisecrack or a line of pulp poetry. Even minor characters and incidental scenes are rich and unforgettable: Theresa Harris as Eunice the maid in her fabulous Billie Holiday hat in the Harlem nightclub; the check-room clerk at the bus station, witness to who knows how many noir entanglements, with his hollow-man motto: "I always say everyone's right"; Joe Stefanos's black overcoat appearing like an ink-spot in the clean white town; the signs the mute Kid flashes to Jeff by the glittering lake, as the sky clouds over…

The movie floats from place to place, blending real landscapes and studio sets, expressionistic stairwells and Ansel Adams mountains. The episodes run together fluid and compulsive as a dream. Sometimes there's nothing but music and movement: Jeff prowling cat-like around Meta Carson's apartment while boogie-woogie piano plays in the next room. The cinematography is distractingly gorgeous, drifting into glistening abstract patterns of black and white, like the web of bare tree-branches projected onto the bodies of Jeff and Ann at their last meeting. A seamless blend of romance and cynicism, drama and humor, OUT OF THE PAST is not only a perfect Hollywood studio product, it's a definitive movie experience. It's supersaturated, yet it never feels overworked, never tries too hard. It just seems to happen, almost by casual serendipity; the wit and elegance and glamour are so unforced and alive. You succumb to it instantly and helplessly as Jeff succumbs to Kathie's magic. The spell breaks for him, but not for us. Disenchantment may be the theme of OUT OF THE PAST, but the movie itself is a source of perennial wonder.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English American Sign Language

Release Date:

December 1947 (USA)

Also Known As:

Build My Gallows High

Filming Locations:

Silver Lake, June Lake Loop, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

RKO Radio Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1