Posting here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear will probably be sporadic for the next day or two—my sister Kat is in town for a visit, and she’s been kind of down as of late (romantic and job problems) so I’m attempting to cheer her up. Because she’s sleeping in the living room, my access to the TV/DVD player has been somewhat curtailed—and her discovery of games on Yahoo! has also affected my computer time as well.

But I did get the opportunity to see Out of the Past (1947) last night, one of the five DVD goodies available on Shadows, Lies and Private Eyes—the new Warner Home Video box set. At the risk of sounding like Bob Hope (“But I gotta tell ya…”), if there’s one movie that serves as the quintessential noir film, it’s this one—were I to recommend a flick to a budding noir buff, this would be my pick.

A man named Joe Stephanos (Paul Valentine) makes a stop in the small burg of Bridgeport to ask questions concerning the owner of a small gas station, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum). We will soon discover that Bailey is actually a private investigator named Jeff Markham, who was hired by Stephanos’ boss Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to track down Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), Sterling’s main squeeze who shot him and made off with $40,000 on her way to South America. Bailey finds her in Acapulco, but the two of them fall in love and take it on the lam from Whit—but when Jeff’s partner (Steve Brodie) tracks them down, Kathie kills him and runs, leaving Jeff to clean up the mess. Jeff has been summoned by Whit to do a job for him—learning too late that escaping his past isn’t as easy as all that.

Out of the Past was directed by Jacques Tourneur, a particular fave of mine who was also responsible for such fine movies as Stars in My Crown (1950) and Night of the Demon (1957)—the best Val Lewton film not produced by Lewton. The cinematographer on Past was Nick Musuraca (who had worked with Tourneur previously on Cat People)—Mitchum often joked that Past was filmed by the illumination of a lighted match. The screenplay was written by Daniel Mainwaring, which was based on his novel Build My Gallows High (written under the pen name of Geoffrey Homes), and it contains a wealth of snappy, hard-boiled patter in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; my favorite has Bailey’s new girl (Virginia Huston) remarking about Kathie: “She can’t be all bad…no one is…” prompting Jeff to retort, “Well, she comes the closest.” (A first draft of Past was purportedly written by author James M. Cain, and although Mainwaring insisted that it was scrapped, the ending of this film is awfully reminiscent of Double Indemnity.)

Robert Mitchum’s film career left behind a long legacy of memorable screen performances, but I think it’s the part of Jeff Bailey that I remember most; when I picture Mitchum it’s always in the form of that sleepy-eyed, trenchcoated lug who’s powerless to escape the spider web woven by black widow Greer. Both Greer and Mitchum later teamed up for a 1949 comedy-crime noir called The Big Steal (directed by Don Siegel and co-written by Mainwaring) that’s fun to watch, although it’s definitely in a much lighter vein than Past. In addition to the cast members above, Past also features fine turns from Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, former Our Gang-er Dickie Moore and OTR announcer/actor Ken Niles.
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