I've (obviously) seen a ton of film noir, including its Japanese and French and Scandinavian and Argentinian (it goes on and on) cousins, and I don't know if there is a better example of the genre than Jacques Tourneur's 1947 absolute classic Out of the Past. How many times have I seen this film - I'd hate to guess, but it's one that I never miss. It's been featured this past month on the Criterion Channel and so I had to re-watch it, even though I also own the DVD. Robert Mitchum is amazing as Jeff Bailey/Markham, a former detective, now gas station owner, who can't outrun his past. Once, in the antediluvian past, I was involved with a woman who proposed that I possessed Mitchum's "sleepy intensity," which I think I only partially understand, but which I like. Jane Greer is wonderfully wicked as Kathie Moffat, who gives Barbara Stanwyck a run for greatest film noir femme fatale of all-time. It also features a very young Kirk Douglas, who is great as the venomous Whit Sterling. The very definition of Required Viewing.
There are so many great lines, almost more than you can count:
Jeff: "That's not the way to win." Kathie: "Is there a way to win?" Jeff: "There's a way to lose more slowly." It's spoken very early in the film, related to a scene when Kathie is gambling, but it essentially is the line that defines the entire movie.
Ann (Jeff's nice girlfriend): "She (Kathie) can't be all bad. No one is." Jeff: "Well, she comes the closest."
Kathie: "Don't you believe me?" Jeff: "Baby, I don't care."
Kathie: "I don't want to die." Jeff: "Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I'm going to die last."
Kathie: "Don't you see? You've only me to make deals with now." Jeff: "Well, build my gallows high, baby."
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