"- It's a small world.
- Yeah, ... or a big sign!"
My review won't take too much of your time. The day after tomorrow I'm going to defend my PhD thesis, and Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past was mentioned in my opponent's feedback. I suppose it is enough reason to write about it now:)
A stranger enters a small town. He is searching somebody, and seems this time he had luck, because one of the inhabitants he isn't a stranger. Jeff Bailey's (Robert Mitchum, one of the coolest guys from the 40s), a small town gas-pumper's hiding is over. His past, namely Mr Whit's (the perfectly mean Kirk Douglas) "long arms" catched him. Mr Whit, who has the phrase "I fire people but nobody quits me." It seems they had some dark business. And Jeff wasn't fired from that. Yet. The "generous" Mr Whit gives another chance to Jeff for redemption. The offer is unrejectable...
The story is classic noir: there are twists and turns, between them the femme fatale who handles the strings of the crime, and a good criminal who has to face with his mistake, with his past (Cronenberg's History of Violence pop up into my mind..). Most interesting is the way how the story told: Tourneur operates with a huge flashback to heightens his film's suspense and with this to delay the answers for the most important questions. Where does Jeff come from? What did he do?
Nothing special "just" a very amusing film from 1947. Mitchum, the screenplay and the perfectly directed plot makes the film well enough to watch (the latter feature made the film important for my defending..).
"A man – trying to run away from his past /
a woman – trying to escape her future."
8/10
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