The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films: Part One

Peter Hoskin and Matthew d'Ancona

27 June 2009

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Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona count down the first 25 of The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films

50.
Out of the Past
(Jacques Tourneur, 1947)

The archetypal film noir: a compelling mix of shadow and light. Our protagonist, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), starts off bathed in sunshine. He runs a garage in Nowheresville USA, and is going steady with the lovely Ann (Virginia Huston). So far, so sedate. But inevitably, irresistibly, the darkness of Jeff’s past seeps into the frame.

There’s one rule in this hardboiled world: a guy just can’t move on. Jeff may have left his past as a private eye behind, but Kirk Douglas’s gangster and Jane Greer’s femme fatale — the ghosts of San Francisco and Mexico — aren’t prepared to let him go. As soon as they reappear on the scene, the film becomes an intricate chemistry experiment: what happens when the present and the past, light and dark, combine? The doomed quality that Mitchum brings to all his performances hints at an answer. All roads lead to the grave.

Director Jacques Tourneur handles the elements expertly, striking a similar tone to his psychological horror pictures Cat People (1942) and Night of the Demon (1957). There’s shadow, there’s light, but the balance between them is determined by forces beyond our control or understanding; forces which could just as easily destroy us as leave us be. Yes, in the end, we’re all helpless. PH