OUT OF THE PAST

[RBH]

Thinking of adding 1947's Out of the Past to my collection this weekend [if the store still has it]
What is the opinion on this film.

 

[imoldfashioned]

I loved it--Jane Greer is absolutely fabulous in that one and Mitchum's always good. I'd highly recommend adding it to your collection.

 

[Feraud]

A GREAT movie!

 

[skyvue]

An all-time great. One of my favorite noirs.

 

[The Reno Kid]

One of the best!

 

[Flitcraft]

Make it happen, Baby!
You won't regret it!
Some people describe this as the archetypal film noir.

 

[Liz]

It's one of my all-time favorites. The dialogue is fantastic!

 

[Solid Citizen]

Best Noir EVER

My all time fav noir, like it better than Double Indemnity!

Mitchum isn't cool he's ICE, Great cinematography & when
that Out of The Past theme music swells watchout. Kirk
Douglas whith the greatest chiseled chin in film history.
SMOKIN

Solid Citizen

PS check out beach house scene with Mitchum & Greer,
HOT!

 

[Mike in Seattle]

It's a goodie!

Another one is I Wake Up Screaming - Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis. The trio of Mature, Alan Mowbray and Allyn Joslin, in a couple scenes where they get into this catty little arguments, are hilarious! Why they didn't team them up in more films and more scenes like those is beyond me.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

It's a knockout, a tour de force by director Jacques Tourneur. (Are you detecting some unanimity of response here?)

There's a fine critical chapter on the film in James Harvey's excellent Movie Love in the Fifties. Harvey rightly says of the screenplay (by Geoffrey Home, James M. Cain, and predominantly Frank Fenton), "It's a remarkable script altogether -- arguably the best written, line for line, of all the noir movies -- certainly the most elegantly written." (Only Force of Evil really rivals Out of the Past in that sense.)

Out of the Past is also beautifully filmed and terrifically well-acted, with perhaps the most iconic Robert Mitchum performance. "Build my gallows high, baby!"

 

[RBH]

Well Hastings did not have the film so I found a used copy of True Confessions [cheap] with DeNiro and Duvall.
Looks to be a good film....

BUT Barnes & Noble had a Film Noir Collection that included

Out Of The Past
The Asphalt Jungle
Gun Crazy
Murder My Sweet
The Set Up

So Tonight I am getting ready for Out Of The Past.

 

[KY Gentleman]

Looks like I'll be hitting my local B&N to find this noir collection!

 

[RBH]

WOW ...what a great film!!!!:eusa_clap
Cant wait to watch the others!

 

[Patrick Murtha]

WOW ...what a great film!!!!:eusa_clap
Cant wait to watch the others!

Every film in that box set is first-rate.

 

[Quigley Brown]

In the top ten list of movies with the most cigarettes smoked...

 

[Patrick Murtha]

In the top ten list of movies with the most cigarettes smoked...

Well, that is true. Here is a passage from Roger Ebert's essay on the film:

The meeting between Mitchum and Douglas opens on a note of humor so quiet, it may pass unnoticed. "Cigarette?" offers Douglas. "Smoking," said Mitchum, holding up his hand with a cigarette in it. Something about that moment has always struck me as odd, as somehow outside the movie, and I asked Mitchum about it after a screening of "Out of the Past" at the Virginia Film Festival.

"Did you guys have any idea of doing a running gag involving cigarette smoking?" I asked him.

"No, no."

"Because there's more cigarette smoking in this movie than in any other movie I've ever seen."

"We never thought about it. We just smoked. And I'm not impressed by that because I don't, honest to God, know that I've ever actually seen the film."

"You've never seen it?"

"I'm sure I have, but it's been so long that I don't know."

That was Mitchum for you, a superb actor who affected a weary indifference to his work.

There is a lot of smoking in "Out of the Past." There is a lot of smoking in all noirs, even the modern ones, because it goes with the territory. Good health, for noir characters, starts with not getting killed. But few movies use smoking as well as this one; in their scenes together, it would be fair to say that Mitchum and Douglas smoke at each other, in a sublimated form of fencing. The director is Jacques Tourneur, a master of dark drama at RKO, also famous for "Cat People" (1942) and "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943). He is working here for the third time with the cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, a master of shadow but also of light, and Musuraca throws light into the empty space between the two actors, so that when they exhale, the smoke is visible as bright white clouds.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I've got to chime in: one of the best noirs. Robert Mitchum is great... And Kirk Douglas is so disturbingly creepy!

 

[Quigley Brown]

Just stumbled across this site...

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/courses/Jbutler/T440/OutOfThePast/index.htm

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Just stumbled across this site...

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/courses/Jbutler/T440/OutOfThePast/index.htm

Wow! That is cool!

 

[skyvue]

Looks like I'll be hitting my local B&N to find this noir collection!

There are four volumes in the Film Noir Classic Collection series so far, KY Gent, and they are all worth checking out. After the first, my favorite is Vol. 4, which makes up in quantity what some might argue it lacks in quality: THE BIG STEAL, ILLEGAL, THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, ACT OF VIOLENCE, CRIME WAVE, DECOY, MYSTERY STREET, SIDE STREET, TENSION, and WHERE DANGER LIVES.

In the Vol. 1 set, I especially like THE SET-UP, a very much under-appreciated movie, and MURDER, MY SWEET, which sees Dick Powell effectively buying his ticket out of Boy Singersville. Robert Mitchum's my favorite Marlowe ever -- too bad he never got to play him at the appropriate age -- but Powell's not bad at all. (Bogart's great, too, of course, but his Marlowe doesn't resemble very closely the Marlowe of Chandler's books.)

If someone knew to Chandler's books wanted a visual image for Marlowe, they could do far worse than to watch OUT OF THE PAST. His character's not named Philip Marlowe, but, for all intents and purposes, he could be.