A high-water mark in the genre, Out of the Past has everything you want in a film noir: a tenacious detective (Robert Mitchum) spinning his wheels to make good, a drop-dead beauty (Jane Greer) up to no good, and a moneyed mobster (Kirk Douglas) with a shark’s grin, plus double crosses, fall guys, shadowy rooms, and bleak souls. Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, a one-time private investigator walking the straight and narrow of small-town life… until an acquaintance from his past pulls him back into the troubles he’d left behind.
God knows we all love Bogart (who passed on this role, as did John Garfield and Dick Powell), but nobody has ever done the laconic, world-weary ex-private-dick who is immune to surprise as well as Mitchum does here. He’s utter perfection, and this role—along with those in The Night of the Hunter and The Friends of Eddie Coyle—comprise the Robert Mitchum Hall of Fame.
Greer just about matches him as Kathy, one of the most alluringly toxic femme fatales to hit the screen. And Kirk Douglas shines in an early role, offering charm and slime in equal parts.
Cynical, bitter and fatalistic, bathed in shadows, suffused with cigarette smoke, Out of the Past is among the most gorgeous noirs ever shot, thanks to director Jacques Tourneur’s mastery of light and shadow. Sunlight never seemed so hostile, darkness never felt so treacherous.