The first thing that happens in this movie is a guy throws a cigarette at a deaf kid. About a minute later Robert Mitchum throws a cigarette at that guy. That’s just what it’s like in the economy of cigarettes. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.

the hays code cut from the kiss on the shoulder to the door swinging open in the wind to the rain outside is one of the most sensational things I've ever seen.

I was supposed to watch this for Cinema 101 in my first semester of college and for some reason skipped the screening. I was an idiot.

"Which place was your favorite?"
"This one right here."
"I bet you say that to all the places."

A tough detective, a perfect femme fatale, a fatalistic atmosphere, flashbacks, and cynical dialogue, maybe the most classic of all classic noirs.

true or false: this film is better than a woman's touch?

OUT OF THE PAST (1947) by French-American film director Jacques Tourneur is a masterpiece of the film noir genre, with an extraordinary Robert Mitchum in the lead, Jane Greer as the Femme Fatale and a very young Kirk Douglas in a supporting part. It’s shot in breathtaking black and white, with lots of flashbacks and an archetypical narration voice. A must!

Wim Wenders (excerpts from a review published in 2023)

robert mitchum was a major fucking babe.

this is my truth and i shall SPEAK it.

89/100

For a film so indelibly involved in the lost rivers of memory, Out of the Past confounds because of its ever-present feeling within the now. Every frame feels like the mistakes and the pain of the past will reach out and strangle our main characters, but that never stops the main mystery from propelling forward with impeccable fluidity. The chemistry between Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer is some of the finest to ever emerge out of the film-noir genre, with the two crafting conversations of moving honesty and sparkling sensuality.

The atmosphere that they're surrounded in, with Nicholas Musuraca conjuring haunting imagery as DP, only cements the fact that Jacques Tourneur was a master of looming terror. Out of the Past, with its hard-boiled corruption and its sexy otherworldly rhythms, is quite possibly the finest horror film that Jacques ever directed. It is film-noir at its most crystalline and pure, and you won't soon forget it.

watched this with my younger brother who asked me to show him some cool older films; he really enjoyed tourneur's use of deep shadows, he said that it felt like a drama with the atmosphere of a horror movie -- which is the most concise definition of noir i can think of! he also remarked on how interesting it was to have a deaf character using sign language in such an old movie, and he's right -- i've rarely seen that in any classic hollywood pictures. finally, he proclaimed this to be "the apex of when people thought smoking was cool" -- hard to disagree with that.