The Cinematheque

“Quintessential film noir … Directed with supreme skill by Tourneur … and brilliantly photographed by Nicholas Musuraca.”

James Monaco, The Movie Guide

“It was the bottom of the barrel and I scraped it. But I didn’t care, I had her.” Jacques Tourneur’s hallucinatory, haunting Out of the Past ranks with Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Killers as one of noir’s seminal works. Like those films, it employs a central noir premise: the told-in-flashback tale of an ill-fated sap’s downfall at the hands of a lethal femme fatale. Robert Mitchum is private-eye Jeff Bailey, hired by gangster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to find Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer), his treacherous runaway mistress. Jeff traces Kathie to a Mexican gin joint—Greer’s mesmerizing first appearance is ​“one of the great entrances in film history” (James Monaco)—and (surprise!) makes the big mistake of falling for her himself. The film was penned, pseudonymously, by Daniel Mainwaring (Invasion of the Body Snatchers). 1984’s Against All Odds was a remake. Cronenberg’s A History of Violence pays homage.

“The definitive flashback movie … One of the most bewildering and beautiful films ever made … The best movie of everyone involved—once seen, never forgotten.”

Don Macpherson, Time Out