Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Screenplay by Geoffrey Homes adapting his novel Build My Gallows High
Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca
Edited by Samuel E. Beetley
Produced by Warren Duff
Starring
Robert Mitchum as Jeff Bailey/Jeff Marcum (Running from the past)
Jane Greer as Kathie (A fatal woman)
Kirk Douglas as Whit (Crime boss)
Dickie Moore as The Kid (Jeff’s employee)
Virginia Huston as Ann (Jeff’s girl in Bridgeport)
Richard Webb as Jim (Has a crush on Ann)
Paul Valentine as Joe (Whit’s henchman)
Steve Brodie as Jack Fisher (Jeff’s partner)
Ken Niles as Leonard Eels (Whit’s lawyer)
. . .
“You see, Jeff, you owe me something. You’ll never be happy until you square yourself.”
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Out of the Past is another one of these old timey black and white movies that gets classified as “film noir.” It has a morally compromised tough guy protagonist who gets trapped in an escalating series of bad deals and burdensome relationships. This one in particular is defined by its relentlessly clever dialogue which serves as a kind of winding road to guide the audience through its maze of lies and schemes. The dialogue is so clever that it seems to come alive from a primordial soup of greed, delusion, desire, and betrayal so that it could stalk the memory as its own strange beast loosed from the heart of the film. The actors are but vessels compelled to speak the words rapidly, crisply, and with an air of just-tossing-it-off, even as it is obvious that every syllable has been meticulously chosen, sequenced, drilled and executed. I was left with the feeling that these people were trapped on DVD in an endless cycle of frustrated desire-no wonder everything they say is so cynical, and everybody’s just too cool for school.
Out of the Past happens in strictly mundane settings, and doesn’t overtly defy the laws of physics. But it will never be confused for naturalism. It’s all too perfect. No one stutters. No one rants. No one’s attention drifts from boredom or carelessness. It’s classy as hell. Mitchum never stubs his big toe and says,”Motherfucking cocksucker!” But no one’s truly innocent despite the elevated language. Everyone’s angling. Everyone’s paying attention even if it’s only to their most murderous desires. Something unnaturally precise obsessively knits itself together perhaps attempting to displace the messiness of mundane reality into exile beyond the cinematic frame. At times the characters seem tickled by the cleverness of their own words even as they betray, are betrayed, murder, and are murdered. In mundane reality crime is just as often opportunistic, greedy, sloppy, idiotic, and desperate-even when it is premeditated. Fargo captures that messy end of the crime movie spectrum. But classic film noir frequently dresses up avarice in sophisticated modernist romanticism evoking a world where, sure, there’s no Sky Daddy God to lean on, it’s our reality now-courtesy of Nietzsche and Doc Oppenheimer-but all the same there’s a looming hand of fate born of some collective yearning for a discernibly purposeful order to things post-WWII, post-Pearl Harbor, post-Trinity, post-Hiroshima, post-Nagasaki, post-Holocaust.
In Out of the Past, we follow a guy named Jeff Bailey who owns a small town gas station. A callous man in a black fedora and raincoat named Joe seeks out Jeff. Joe and Jeff have a tense conversation which lets Jeff know that he has to go back to work for a crook named Whit. Whit needs Jeff to retrieve his income tax records from an untrustworthy lawyer.
Before Jeff leaves his small town business to serve Whit he tells his girlfriend Ann the secret of his past life. This precipitates an epic flashback in which we learn why Jeff became a gas station owner: to escape his past as a sleazy dick-for-hire who betrayed both his partner and his client over a fugitive woman. The woman is Kathie, who was the love of Whit’s life. Until she shot him a couple times and robbed his casino bankroll. But Whit survived and hired Jeff to bring her back alive. You would think Whit would just let her go, but apparently he can’t or won’t. Whit’s the kinda guy that makes no distinction between Needs and Wants, I guess.
Jeff finds Kathie in Acapulco. Jeff falls for Kathie. Kathie wants to escape Whit. They escape. Jeff and Kathie make a life in California. But then Jeff’s angry partner-Jack Fisher-in the private eye business shows up asking for a payoff. Jeff and Jack fight for a bit until the trigger happy Kathie blasts the would-be blackmailer into the next world. Jeff says he didn’t want Jack to get killed. Even so, he sets about the grim task of disposing of the corpse. But then he looks back at Kathie . . . and she’s gone. Just like Batman always does to Commissioner Gordon.
Kathie’s in the wind. Jeff starts his life all over as a gas station operator. He hires a young deaf-mute known only as the Kid. He is now an employer of both himself and another employee. Respectable. He falls in love with a nice small town girl named Ann. Cute. And then Whit sends his errand boy Joe to rope Jeff in for a redemption job since the mission to retrieve Kathie went down in flames. And wouldn’t you know it? Kathie’s right there by Whit’s side all over again. People moving in grotesque circles. That damn cynical-cyclical nature of desire. What’s to be done?
Jeff goes back to work for Whit. Things do not go as planned. Jeff’s technically endangered by the circumstances he faces . . . but he coolly marches into doom. I guess he’s been jerked around so much he’s resigned to his fate. Jeff is also-as played by Robert Mitchum-rather imposing. No one he clashes with seems a match for him. Jeff looks like he could easily pummel Whit-played by a delightfully evil Kirk Douglas-into bone porridge. I ended up coming to the conclusion that Jeff had been cycled through this ordeal so many times-on film reels, on VHS, Betamax, DVD, Blu-Ray-that he just can’t fight it anymore.
As for Kathie, I guess she’s one of these femme fatales you hear about, but I couldn’t really get too mad at her. Most of what she does makes a tough kinda sense-except going back to Whit. Sorry, babe, but you fucked the dog on that one.
Out of the Past is a cynical-cyclical journey into oblivion. Jeff Marcum tried to get out of the trap of his actions by changing his name to Jeff Bailey. But he just couldn’t let go of his Jeffness. And that Jeffness, it would seem, doomed his ass. I’m sure of it. It’s all about that accursed Jeffness.
BONUS: Too bad Hollywood could never get its shit together to do a movie of Red Harvest. I think Mitchum in his prime would’ve been perfect as the Continental Op. Alas, it never happened. But we’ll always have Yojimbo . . .
