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| Source:Roger Ebert with a look at Out of The Past (1947) |
"Most crime movies begin in the present and move forward, but film noir coils back into the past. The noir hero is doomed before the story begins — by fate, rotten luck, or his own flawed character. Crime movies sometimes show good men who go bad. The noir hero is never good, just kidding himself, living in ignorance of his dark side until events demonstrate it to him.
“Out of the Past” (1947) is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The movie stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we’ve even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.
Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, whose name was Jeff Markham when he was working as a private eye out of New York. In those days he was hired by a gangster named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas, electrifying in an early role) to track down a woman named Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer, irresistibly mixing sexiness and treachery). Kathie shot Sterling four times, hitting him once, and supposedly left with $40,000 of his money. Sterling wants Jeff to bring her back. It’s not, he says, that he wants revenge: “I just want her back. When you see her, you’ll understand better...
From Roger Ebert
"Noir Alley - Out of the Past (1947) intro 20220605 by Eddie Muller shown on June 5, 2022
From TCM's Noir Alley (Saturdays at Midnight ET and Sunday 10am ET) hosted by the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller."
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"Noir Alley - Out of the Past (1947) outro 20220605 by Eddie Muller shown on June 5, 2022
From TCM's Noir Alley (Saturdays at Midnight ET and Sunday 10am ET) hosted by the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller"
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Just to give you my little personal background of this film first. I caught this movie almost by accident 5 years ago in the summer of 2019, on a Sunday, when I just got home from biking, just got out of the shower, having a little dinner, and I was sort of flipping around on the TV that night. And I just couldn't stop watching the movie. And I immediately checked to see when this film would be on again. Turns out the next filming of Out of The Past from TCM, was a year later from when I saw it the first time. This film is not on TV very often. So what I like to do with all my favorite films, is record them on DVD when they're on TV. Which is what I've done with Out of The Past and most of my favorite films.
Eddie Muller thinks either Out of The Past or Double Indemnity is the best film noir of all-time. I look at Out of The Past, the way I look at North By Northwest: NBN is the best Alfred Hitchcock film ever. And Out of The Past is the best film noir ever.
In a 97 minute film, you have the best of film noir:
You have what looks like a love story starting out, where you have Jeff Bailey/Markham (played by Robert Mitchum) basically falling in love with the woman who he was hired to find by a gangster, Whit Sterling (played by Kirk Douglas) almost before he ever meets her.
To Whit Sterling's credit, he did warn Markham that Kathie Moffatt (played by Jane Greer) was no ordinary woman. I mean the word "unforgettable" comes to mind with both Jane Greer and Kathie Moffatt. Every time she speaks, I'm staring at her eyes and and her facial expressions, as I'm trying not to fall into a trance from that and trying to hear what she says. And that's basically what happens to Markham here. Until she kills his former partner because he was simply trying to retrieve the money that she stole from her gangster boyfriend. While double-crossing his old partner Jeff.
I think another thing that makes Out of The Past such a great film, is it's so classic film noir.
You have the man (played by Robert Mitchum) who is sort of the lead good guy (even though there's no such thing as a good guy or good girl in Out of The Past) who is really just a survivor. As Jeff Markham says in the film: "If we are all going to die, I'm going to die last".
There are no saints or angels in Out of The Past, or I film noir in general. There are just a lot of narcissistic, double-crossers, who are simply in the business of getting what they believe is there's and what they want. And then you have survivors on the other side who are doing exactly that. They don't want the real crooks to get what away with whatever they're trying to get away with. Or hurt the people that they care about. But just like there are no real cold days in Hell and there are no virgins at whore houses, there are no saints or angels in film noir.
Jeff Markham is simply looking to survive this experience. Which means staying alive and staying out of prison. And even coming out of this experience better off than he started. But he plans on at the very least being the last person to die during this experience.
I think the two best scenes in Out of The Past, is the San Francisco scene. That's about 1/2 of the film right there. That could've been a great TV episode of some great detective series from the 1950s or 60s, something like Peter Gunn or something.
Whit Sterling and his organization simply want their tax attorney out-of-the-way. Sterling sends Markham to San Francisco to meet with Meta Carson (played by Rhonda Fleming) who introduces him to Sterling's tax attorney, Eels (played by Ken Niles) at his apartment. But the whole point of that is to show that Markham was in that apartment the night that Eels was murdered. Markham being the experienced and intelligent detective that he is, figures that out from the beginning that he's being framed. And gets ahold of Sterling's tax records, in order to keep himself alive and prevent these gangsters who work for Sterling, from turning him over to the police for the murder of the tax attorney.
My 2nd favorite scene in the film is towards the end of it after Kathie (played by Jane Greer) just killed Whit Sterling (even though they don't show us doing that) and I think she perfectly sums up who she is and what Out of The Past is really about, which is a movie about surviving, with this quote:
Kathie: "I never told you I was anything but what I am. You just wanted to imagine I was. That's why I left you. You're no good and neither am I. That's why we deserve each other.
Kathie trying to convince Jeff that they belong together by saying he either takes her back, or he will go down for the murders of Eels, Joe Stephanos (played by Paul Valentine) and Whit Sterling:
"Whit's dead. A bundle of papers isn't any good. If Joe was around, you could use him, but Joe's dead too. So what are you gonna do about Eels and Fisher? For that matter, what are you gonna do about this? Someone has to take the blame. You have nothing on me, but I'd make a fine witness for the prosecution. Don't you see? You've only have me to make deals with now. No, no, we're starting all over. I want to go back to Mexico. I want to walk out of the sun again and find you waiting. I want to sit in the same moonlight and tell you all the things I never talked to you - till you don't hate me, till sometime you'll love again."
Again, back to my point about there being no saints or angels in Out of the Past, just survivors... Kathie has just laid out the score for what their situation is. She's completely honest and truthful about how she would screw him over, if he doesn't agree to go with her. And he's sort of resigned to thinking that he basically has no other choice. Otherwise he could go down for 3 murders, thanks to her. And keep in mind, if you seen this film before, she had Joe Stephanos (played by Paul Valentine) try to murder him, right before they're all back at the Sterling cabin together. And he suspects her of that.
Is Jane Greer or even her character Kathie Moffat the only great thing about Out of The Past, or even the only reason to watch Out of The Past? Of course not. Otherwise this film wouldn't be the great film that it is. Which I believe is the greatest film noir ever. Even better than Dark Passage and The Big Sleep, which are also two of my personal favorites. But if the definition of femme fatal is:
"Sometimes called a man-eater, Mata Hari, or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art."
Then that's Kathie Moffat to perfection. And Jane Greer plays this role perfectly.
On the surface, you would think that Kathie Moffat is too cute scare a mouse. That the mouse would just stare at her thinking: "Who is this baby trying to fool? She's even cuter than me". But that's the femme fatal at it's best. The woman who is simply too cute to make any man suspicious of her. Until he gets some experience with her and learns the hard way that you can never just automatically trust a baby face. Doesn't matter how beautiful she is.
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