Out of the Past

“Build my gallows high, baby.” Sharing a set-up with Robert Siodmak’s 1946 The Killers (stranger arrives in town looking for the local gas station attendant with the mysterious past), Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past stars Robert Mitchum as gas station owner Jeff Bailey, a former private investigator now living a simple, small town life with his soon-to-be-wife Ann (Virginia Huston). When the strange visitor informs Bailey that gambling kingpin Whit Stirling (Kirk Douglas) wants to see him in Lake Tahoe, the film divides into two halves: the first comprises an extended flashback to the time when Stirling hired Jeff to find his beautiful, conniving girlfriend Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), who took off with Stirling’s money after shooting him; the second half follows Bailey in the present as he reluctantly takes on a new case for Stirling which will see him framed for murder and reunited with Kathie, this time maybe forever. Both halves are neatly sewn together, but the film is intricately plotted, jumping through time and space, passing through mountain cabins and elaborate mansions, bodies piling up along the way. While Stirling and his manipulative ways present the more obvious threat, Bailey discovers over time that Kathie is the more intimidating trap. Considered by many a near perfect example of film noir, Out of the Past reminds us, through Bailey’s self-destruction, that sometimes the past is inescapable and the future is always out of reach.