☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Out
of the Past (1947) – J. Tourneur
Quintessential noir with as many of the
features of the genre as you would hope to find. Of course, film noir as a genre has been
constructed post hoc, so director Jacques Tourneur wasn’t exactly working from
a formula – but this wasn’t the first noir, so something was definitely in the
water. Robert Mitchum plays a detective
hired by arrogant rich Kirk Douglas to find his girlfriend (Jane Greer) who
shot him and absconded with $40K. Mitchum does catch up with her in Acapulco
where they idle away their days until they decide to doublecross Douglas and
hole up in San Francisco as lovers.
Ultimately, though, they are tracked down by Mitchum’s ex-partner, now working
for Douglas. All this is shown in
flashback a number of years later with a voiceover by Mitchum as he relates his
past to new love interest Virginia Huston in the small town where he has
escaped to run a gas station. He’s finally told her the sordid details
because Douglas has finally found him again and called him to Lake Tahoe for a
meeting. It turns out that Douglas has
another job for him, one that he can’t refuse, one that might be a
frame-up. And that doesn’t begin to
detail the complicated plot that ensnares the laid back but fatalistic
Mitchum. Showing the noir protagonist’s
true disdain for his own welfare, when the femme fatale starts to reveal some
of the ensnaring complications, Mitchum utters the classic line, “Baby, I don’t
care…”. But he should have. A masterpiece of the genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment