Classic 40s Movie: “Out of the Past”

September is Classic 40s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from Brantley Aufill.

Movie Title: Out of the Past

Year: 1947

Writer: Daniel Mainwaring, based on his novel Build My Gallows High

Lead Actors: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Dickie Moore

Director: Jacques Tourneur

IMDb Plot Summary: A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses and duplicitous dames.

Why I Think This Is A Classic 40s Movie

The visual look of film noir had already begun popping up in the years before World War II (in part because directors like Fritz Lang, heavily steeped in German Expressionism, were fleeing the Nazis in Europe). But seeing the horrors that humankind is capable of added a bleak despair to its characters, too. The war took the lives of many, no matter how good they were. And so in noir, our main characters start to find themselves doomed no matter what they do. A seemingly small, simple choice leads to chaos. Witness Walter Neff in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Or The Swede in THE KILLERS. These guys aren’t ‘bad guys’, but they find themselves deeper and deeper in it.

This film opens with Jeff Bailey’s past coming to find him. He was a detective, gave it up and went into hiding. He made mistakes and got out. Started an honest business, found a new love. He tried to do good, and still the past comes for him. He must pay. As he drives north to deal with that past, he tells his new love Ann (Virginia Huston) the truth, and we get a long flashback: hired by a gangster to find a girl, chasing the girl to Mexico, falling for her, double-crossing the gangster, running off with her. They seem to have gotten away with it, too, until his old partner spots him. Here, again, in the story-within-the-story, his past finds him. Trying to do good, but shit keeps hitting his fan. Flashback over, the gangster says Bailey’s got a debt to pay. Bailey takes the job, only to discover it’s a frame up. Cue several quadruple-crosses, and roll credits.

The film hits all the noir elements so directly it almost seems self-aware. The long flashback gives us the dry voiceover we expect — like Walter Neff spinning the whole of DOUBLE INDEMNITY into his dictaphone — but only for 30 minutes. This is a story about yesterday coming back for blood today. Voiceover implies the one narrating will survive, and Mainwaring’s script will have none of that certainty here. The fantastic dialogue was due in part to a punch-up by pulp novelist James Cain (who wrote the book DOUBLE INDEMNITY). Sure, the last 25 minutes leave you wondering what exactly is happening, but everyone’s so fascinating, who cares?

Robert Mitchum is fantastic as the grizzled, snarky detective. Always smoking, always wearing the tan overcoat and fedora that no true hard-boiled noir hero would do without. He seems two steps ahead, even when he openly admits he’s not. Kirk Douglas is dangerously charming as gangster Whit Sterling, who hires Mitchum to find his girl, Kathy. Mind you, Kathy tried to kill Whit before she ran off, and still he wants her back. She’s gotta be great, right?

Oh boy, is she a piece of work. With apologies to Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Greer might be the most dangerous, seductive, manipulative, gorgeous femme fatale in all of noir. The Nitrate Diva (@NitrateDiva) said that Greer “always had the calm and collected look of a woman who’d decided on the exact spot where to bury you.” That’s it exactly. You believe right away that Mitchum is drawn into her big, beautiful eyes. And yet you’re not surprised when she screws everyone over, again and again and again. And again. She’s the best part of this film, and you love to hate her.

My Favorite Moment In The Movie

In the opening minutes, Whit’s henchman drives into small town Bridgeport, looking for Bailey at his gas station. The boy who works for Bailey (Dickie Moore, who passed away earlier this month) is a deaf mute — fitting that the one Bailey trusts is the one he knows can’t spill his secrets. We cut to a mountain lake, where Bailey and Ann are having a romantic day. She’s in his arms, he’s kissing her head as she starts to wax poetic. Then he looks off-screen, perking up. There’s the boy, a dire look on his face, signing furiously. Ann notices, her story cut off, and there’s an awkward silence as Bailey learns he’s been found. Because it’s sign language and not dialogue, Bailey still has a choice: will he share his past with Ann, and with us?

This simple little moment is the film in a nutshell: he’d created himself a nice romantic movie to settle into, only to find it interrupted by the past. Sorry, buddy, the noir’s not done with you yet.

My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie

Hard to pick just one!

ANN: She can’t be all bad. No one is.
JEFF: Well, she comes the closest.

KATHY: Oh Jeff, you ought to have killed me for what I did a moment ago.
JEFF: There’s still time.

JEFF (to Kathy): Get out, will you? I have to sleep in this room.

WHIT: You’re gonna take the rap and play along. You’re gonna make every exact move I tell you. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. And I’ll promise you one thing: it won’t be quick. I’ll break you first. You won’t be able to answer a telephone or open a door without thinking, ‘This is it.’ And it when it comes, it still won’t be quick. And it won’t be pretty. You can take your choice.

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie

There’s a moment when Kirk Douglas offers Mitchum a cigarette. Mitchum’s already got one. “Cigarette?” Douglas asks. “Smoking,” Mitchum responds. It’s a funny little delivery, and completely improvised. Mitchum smoked so much in this movie he forgot this was a scene in which he didn’t yet have one.

To find Kathy, Jeff goes to a Harlem dance club to talk to her maid. The woman playing the maid is the great African-American actress Theresa Harris. She acted in almost 100 films, sadly uncredited in most (including this one). Check her out in the highly controversial Pre-Code film BABY FACE (’33), sharing the screen with Barbara Stanwyck. She’s wonderful.

Thanks, Brantley! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!

We already have a set of classic 50s movies, 60s Movies, 70s movies, 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 40s movies. And thanks to the GITS community, we’ve got 30 movies in the works, one for each day of the month!

Those who I put in bold have already sent me their posts. If you haven’t sent yours to me, please do so as soon as you can!!!

Act of Violence — Eric Rodriguez
Arsenic and Old Lace — Gisela Wehrl
Bicycle Thieves — Megaen Kelly
Brief Encounter — Emily Bonkoski
Casablanca — Paul Graunke
Double Indemnity — Susan Winchell
Five Graves to Cairo — Jeff Gibson
Foreign Correspondent — Doc Kane
Here Comes Mr. Jordan — Izabela Kline
His Girl Friday — John Henderson
It’s a Wonderful Life — David Laudenslager
Key Largo — Will King
Laura — Melinda Mahaffey Icden
Les enfants du paradis — Brendan Howley
Mrs. Miniver — Traci Nell Peterson
Notorious — Christine Henton
Now Voyager — Melissa Privette
Out of the Past — Brantley Aufill
Rope — Lance Morgan
The Bank Dick — Bob Saenz
The Best Years of Their Lives — Shaun Parker
The Big Sleep — Ipsita Barik
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir — Annie Wood
The Long Voyage Home — Vincent Martini
The Lost Weekend — Liz Warner
The Maltese Falcon — Roy Gordon
The Ox-Bow Incident — Clay Mitchell
The Philadelphia Story — Kristen Demaline
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock — David Joyner
The Third Man — Harry Cooke
To Have and Have Not — Felicity Flesher

Thanks to everyone who steps up for this ongoing project!

For the original post explaining the series, go here.

For all of the 40s movies featured in the series, go here.

Click REPLY and see you in comments about today’s classic 40s movie!