Joe Stefanos arrives in Bridgeport, California, a rural mountain town, seeking Jeff Bailey, who owns a local gas station. Joe meets The Kid, Jeff's deaf-mute employee and friend, and asks him about Jeff's whereabouts. Meanwhile, Jeff is fishing with Ann Miller and they are in love. (Her lifelong friend Jim is jealous.) The Kid shows up at the fishing spot and interrupts them, signing to Jeff that someone is asking about him. Jeff returns to the gas station and Stefanos tells Jeff that he must go to Lake Tahoe to meet "Whit" and that it has been a long time since they met.
Jeff invites Ann to ride with him to Whit's place. He tells her about his past in a flashback that took place three years ago. Jeff Bailey's real name is Jeff Markham. He and Jack Fisher were partners and private investigators in New York. Whit Sterling, a gambling kingpin, hires Markham—solo—to find Whit's girlfriend, Kathie Moffat, who shot Whit and stole $40,000 from him. Whit promises Jeff she will not be harmed if he finds her and has her returned to him.
Jeff eventually corners Kathie in Acapulco. He is immediately taken by her beauty. She admits she shot Whit and that she hates him, but denies taking his money. Eventually, Jeff falls in love with her and proposes that they run away together. Suddenly, Whit and Stefanos show up at Jeff's place in Acapulco. They ask Jeff if he managed to find Kathie but he lies to them and says that Kathie is on a south-bound steamer. Whit instructs Jeff to keep looking for her.
Jeff and Kathie then secretly run to San Francisco. At first they avoid appearing in public spaces, but then feel more comfortable to go out as time moves on. However, Jack Fisher, who is now working for Whit, spots Jeff at the track. Jeff arranges to meet Kathie to split and then meet at a mountain cabin to lose Fisher from trailing him, but Fisher chooses to follow Kathie instead and catches them at the cabin. Fisher tries to blackmail them and the two men brawl. Kathie deliberately kills Fisher and drives away, leaving behind a bank book showing a balance of $40,000. She had in fact taken Whit's money.
Mitchum and Greer
The flashback ends. Jeff wants to clean things up and return to Ann. Ann drops him off at Whit's estate. A cheerful Whit tells Jeff he has a job for him. To his surprise, Jeff finds out that Kathie went back to Whit and she appears as the two men have breakfast. She later comes to speak privately with Jeff and she tells him that she had no choice but to come back. She told Whit about their relationship but not about what happened to Fisher. He tells her to get out.
Mitchum and Greer
Leonard Eels, a crooked San Francisco lawyer, helped Whit dodge $1 million in taxes and is now blackmailing him. Whit wants Jeff to recover the incriminating records and tells him to meet with Eels's secretary. The secretary, Meta Carson, explains the plan to Jeff, who suspects he is being framed. That night, at Eels's apartment, Jeff alerts Eels, obliquely, promising to return. After Jeff and Meta leave Eels's apartment, Jeff trails Meta, then returns and finds Eels dead. He decides to hide the body in the closet.
Jeff then sneaks into Meta's apartment, and overhears Kathie arranging for the discovery of Eels's body. When the hidden body is not found, she believes Eels has escaped. Jeff confronts her, and Kathie reveals that she gave Whit a signed affidavit swearing that Jeff killed Fisher. She says they can start all over again. They kiss, he leaves. Stefanos arrives and confirms to Kathie that he killed Eels.
Jeff consigns the tax papers to a delivery service. Whit's thugs capture him. He offers the incriminating records in exchange for the affidavit, without implicating Kathie. When Kathie and Meta arrive at Eels's apartment to retrieve the affidavit, the police are already there. The women instead phone Whit.
Jeff becomes wanted for the murders of Fisher and Eels, and police expect him to return to Bridgeport. Stefanos, directed by Kathie, trails the Kid to the gorge where Jeff is hiding out. The Kid spots Stefanos poised to shoot Jeff and hooks his coat with a fishing line, pulling him off-balance so that he falls to his death. Jeff returns to Whit's mansion to inform them of Stefanos's death and to tell Whit about Kathie's double-cross. He suggests making Stefanos's death look like a guilt-ridden suicide after his murder of Eels. He will return the records if Whit destroys Kathie's affidavit and hands her over to the police for Fisher's death. Whit accepts, promising Kathie he will kill her if she does not cooperate.
Jeff meets Ann in the woods. She believes in him, but tells him to be absolutely sure of what he wants. She will wait.
Jeff discovers that Kathie has killed Whit. She gives Jeff a choice: run away with her or take the blame for all three murders. He dials the phone while she is upstairs packing. They leave in a car with Jeff driving. Seeing a police roadblock ahead, Kathie shoots him. She fires at the police. A machine gun riddles the car with bullets, killing her.
In Bridgeport, Ann asks the Kid if Jeff was going away with Kathie. Lying, the Kid nods his head. Ann gets into Jim's car, and the Kid smiles, saluting Jeff's name on the gas station's sign.
Cast
Robert Mitchum as Jeff Bailey, previously known as Jeff Markham
Out of the Past is considered one of the greatest of all films noir.[2][11][12][13] Robert Ottoson hailed the film as "the ne plus ultra of forties film noir".[14]Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times in 1947, complimented the crime drama's direction and performances, although he did find the latter portion of the screenplay hard to follow:
...it's very snappy and quite intriguingly played by a cast that has been well and smartly directed by Jacques Tourneur. Robert Mitchum is magnificently cheeky and self-assured as the tangled 'private eye,' consuming an astronomical number of cigarettes in displaying his nonchalance. And Jane Greer is very sleek as his Delilah, Kirk Douglas is crisp as a big crook and Richard Webb, Virginia Huston, Rhonda Fleming and Dickie Moore are picturesque in other roles. If only we had some way of knowing what's going on in the last half of this film, we might get more pleasure from it. As it is, the challenge is worth a try.[15]
Shortly after the film's release, the staff of the widely read trade publicationVariety also gave it a positive review:
Out of the Past is a hardboiledmelodrama [from the novel by Geoffrey Homes] strong on characterization. Direction by Jacques Tourneur pays close attention to mood development, achieving realistic flavor that is further emphasized by real life settings and topnotch lensing by Nicholas Musuraca...Mitchum gives a very strong account of himself. Jane Greer as the baby-faced, charming killer is another lending potent interest. Kirk Douglas, the gangster, is believable and Paul Valentine makes his role of henchman stand out. Rhonda Fleming is in briefly but effectively."[16]
Out of the Past is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The film stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.[13]
With regard to the production's stylish and moody cinematography, Ebert also dubbed the film "The greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time":[17]
...The trick, as demonstrated by Jacques Tourneur and his cameraman, Nicholas Musuraca, is to throw a lot of light into the empty space where the characters are going to exhale. When they do, they produce great white clouds of smoke, which express their moods, their personalities and their energy levels. There were guns in Out of the Past, but the real hostility came when Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoked at each other.[17]
The film holds a score of 93% on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 9/10, based on 40 reviews.[18]
Adaptations
Out of the Past was remade as Against All Odds (1984) with Rachel Ward in the Greer role, Jeff Bridges filling in for Mitchum, and James Woods as a variation of Kirk Douglas' villain, with Jane Greer as the mother of her original character in Out of the Past and Richard Widmark in a supporting role.[19]
On Nov. 14, 1987, Mitchum guest hosted Saturday Night Live. Greer made a surprise appearance in a gag sequel called "Out of Gas," in which their characters met again 40 years later at a filling station.
^Ottoson, Robert (1981). A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir, 1940-1958. Metuchen, N.J., and London: Scarecrow Press. p. 132. ISBN0-8108-1363-7. OCLC6708669.
Schatz, Thomas (1999) [1997]. Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. History of the American cinema, volume 6. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN0-520-22130-3. OCLC40907588.
Out of the Past by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 406-408
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