Out of the Past

1947 noir classic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Detective-for-hire Jeff Bailey's attempting to live a quiet life in a do-nothing town, working at a gas station and dating a nice girl. A mysterious man from his past pops up and yanks Bailey back into his less-prosaic days. While driving with his girlfriend to meet Whit Sterling, he fills her in on his backstory, telling about the time he was hired by Whit Sterling to find estranged girlfriend Kathie Moffat, a woman who shot him a couple times in the abdomen before her departure. He finds her, and although she seems like the type of gal who could shoot him in the abdomen a couple times and then depart, he starts nailing her. Sexually, I mean. And since Robert Mitchum is in the movie, things don't work out so well after that.

Speaking of sex, this movie has a great 1940's sex scene. Mitchum and seductive Greer flee a rainstorm on a beach (interestingly [and symbolically], backdropped with all these nets) and go back to her place. He kisses her on the neck, the lights go out, the camera pans to the right, and the blustery night pushes the door wide open. Damn! Is that hot or what? Mitchum's great as usual as the doomed protagonist, a guy who, no matter how good he is at his job, is going to wind up dead by the end of the movie. He's one of the few actors who can have this layer of machismatic confidence not quite hiding a layer of doomed resignation. His performance fools the viewer into thinking the guy's in control of a situation that he just has no control over. What a face that Mitchum has. Greer's perfect as the femme fatale. From the moment she appears on the screen (a great shot with a great line, a line paralleled a few scenes later, that goes with it), you no that she's no good. And there's Kirk Douglas again, his character a nice contrast to what Mitchum's got going on. Director Jacques Tourneur, a Frenchman, uses light and dark and shadows and symbols to tell this story, one that grows more and more complex as it goes until it's so muddy that you have to pause and give your mind time to catch up a bit. This is nearly noir perfection, from the first appearance of Sterling's darkly-dressed thug at the beginning to the expression of the deaf kid at the end.

Shane-movies trivia [Spoiler Alert!]: I think it would hurt to get shot in the groin.