Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Out of the Past Blu-ray Movie Review

Fool for Love

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 10, 2014

Along with Double Indemnity, which appeared three years earlier, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past is one of the classics of film noir, but unlike Billy Wilder's morality play about lust, murder and insurance, Tourneur's stylish tale of a detective sauntering toward his doom wasn't immediately recognized as a masterpiece. Out of the Past needed time to find its audience. One reason was that the film wasn't produced by a major studio, which helps explains why it wasn't showered with the Oscar nominations that greeted Double Indemnity. Another reason was that its director was best known for horror films like Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie—profitable fare, but not serious work, by the standards of the time. But probably the main reason is that Out of the Past is a more challenging work than Double Indemnity. Its story, adapted by Daniel Mainwaring from his own novel (under the pen name Geoffrey Homes) winds, twists and doubles back on itself, with essential plot information casually tossed off along the way. It's a film that requires (and rewards) strict attention from the viewer and multiple viewings. In that sense, the film was ahead of its time. It had to await an audience that was ready for it.

The film stars Robert Mitchum in a career-changing role as a man who finds that he can't outrun a checkered past. Before Out of the Past, Mitchum mostly played nice guys, but Tourneur's film redefined him in the eyes of Hollywood and paved the way for such memorable roles as Max Cady in the original Cape Fear and the terrifying Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter. Still, the most memorable figure in Out of the Past isn't Mitchum's ill-fated detective but the woman for whom he destroys himself, played by a then-22-year-old Jane Greer in the role for which she will always be best known. Greer later said that she loved playing Kathie Moffat, because everyone talks about the character before she appears on screen, thus giving her a fabulous introduction, much like Orson Welles' Harry Lime receives in The Third Man. But such introductions don't work unless the person who ultimately appears is able to live up to expectations, and Greer did so with such intensity that she instantly joined the ranks of classic femme fatales. Her approach has been imitated ever since. (Watch Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, and the parallels are unmistakable.) Greer's stamp on the role was so indelible that, when Out of the Past was loosely remade as Against All Odds, with Greer playing the mother of the character she had created over thirty years earlier, the character had to be completely reconceived. No one else could have come close.

Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, as he is known at the beginning of the film, when Jeff is running a gas station in the small California town of Bridgeport. Though only a recent arrival, Jeff has acquired a loyal employee known only as "The Kid" (Dickie Moore), who, though deaf and dumb, is alert and highly intelligent. Jeff is dating a sweet local girl named Ann Miller (Virginia Huston), despite her parents' disapproval and the jealousy of the local sheriff, Jim (Richard Webb).

Then one day, Jeff's past arrives in the form of a thug named Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine), who drives into Jeff's gas station and informs him that an old "friend", Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas), wants to see him at his place in Lake Tahoe. Ann insists on accompanying her man through the long nighttime drive to the meeting, during which Jeff tells her the truth about his past.

His real name is Jeff Markham, and once upon a time he was a private investigator in New York in partnership with one Jack Fisher (Steve Brodie). Whit Sterling was a big-time gambler, whose girlfriend, Kathie Moffat, shot him and ran off with $40,000 dollars. Sterling hired Jeff to retrieve her. Jeff traced Kathie to Acapulco, but he didn't bring her back. Instead, they fell in love and disappeared together to San Francisco and then into the backwoods of California. But something went wrong and they split up. Now Sterling has found Jeff.

The summary above is, by design, elliptical and abbreviated. It takes until almost the middle of Out of the Past for Jeff to relate his entire history to Ann, because it includes many crucial events that will have consequences in the latter half of the film. Perhaps the single most important quality of these flashback scenes is the intensity of the longing that Kathie Moffat inspires in Jeff almost from the moment she walks into the Mexican bar where he is hoping to find her. Beautiful, cool, mysterious, standoffish with just a hint of encouragement, she is temptation incarnate. "She can't be all bad", Ann says to Jeff. "No one is." To which he replies with the bitter tone of the betrayed: "Well, she comes the closest."

After Ann drops off Jeff at Whit Sterling's estate, Out of the Past shifts into a different register. Jeff knows he's lost and that no one he meets can be trusted, but he still tries to find a way to escape his fate. Whit Sterling is all welcoming smiles, but he wants Jeff to do another job for him to make amends for stealing Kathie. The task involves a lawyer and accountant named Eels (Ken Niles), who has damaging evidence on Whit that Whit wants Jeff to steal. Eels's secretary, Meta Carson (Rhonda Fleming), has been paid for her assistance. Jeff's attempt to investigate every angle of Whit's scheme while appearing to play along supplies much of the tension in the film's second half, but the real mystery is Kathie Moffat, who reappears, spinning a variety of tales that may or may not be true. Part of Jeff would still like to believe every word from Kathy's mouth. No doubt she's counting on that.

Mitchum's Jeff grows in stature in the second half of the film, as his worst suspicions prove to be right each time, and every last illusion is shattered. None of what happens to Jeff surprises him, though. Somewhere deep inside, he has always known that he would have to pay for the lines he crossed, all those years ago in Mexico.

Out of the Past Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Many posters on the Blu-ray.com forum have complained about the slow startup of the Warner Archive Collection's Blu-ray program and the high cost of its releases, relative to most catalog titles from Warner Home Video. But Out of the Past should be Exhibit A for the truth of the adage that you get what you pay for. If WHV had released this 97-minute black-and-white film with its windowbox bars and minimal extras, the feature would have been compressed onto a BD-25 with a low bitrate in order to shave every possible penny off the budget against the likelihood of retailers discounting the disc to $7 and under. Since WAC doesn't operate under those constraints, it was free to place Out of the Past on a BD-50 with an average bitrate of 34.57 Mbps, which is unheard-of at WHV. It looks gorgeous.

The image on WAC's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray delivers the atmospheric cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca (I Remember Mama) with the kind of depth and detail that demonstrates, yet again, why the format is a gift to fans of classic films. The bright opening in Bridgeport has an almost tactile quality, as director Tourneur establishes the idyllic surroundings where Jeff Bailey has been trying to lead a quiet life. The rest of the film becomes darker, with backgrounds often filled with shadows or, especially at night, receding into dark areas composed of different shades of black and gray. The transfer used by WAC has both excellent blacks and fine gradations of gray and white. Detail in faces, hair, clothing and objects is well-delineated, even when a haze of cigarette smoke fills the frame. (The smoking in the film is legendary.)

The source material for Out of the Past is either in pristine shape or has been restored to perfection. It looks as good as if the movie had just been shot.

Out of the Past Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original mono track has been supplied as 2.0 mono, with identical left and right channels, and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. It's a satisfactory presentation that is constrained only by the limitations of its source. The dynamic range is relatively narrow with a compressed top end and no bass extension, but the dialogue is clear. The tense score is by RKO's resident thriller expert, Ray Webb (Notorious).

Out of the Past Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The sole extra is the commentary by James Ursini originally recorded for Warner's 2004 DVD release of Out of the Past. An expert on film noir and author of such works as The Noir Style and LA Noir, Ursini provides both an introduction to the genre and to the essential elements of Tourneur's film. Longtime fans probably won't learn anything they didn't already know, but newcomers should find Ursini's commentary a welcome aid to situating Out of the Past in both film history and the careers of its stars.

Out of the Past Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mitchum's Jeff in Out of the Past does exactly what Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon refuses to do—he "plays the sap" for a duplicitous woman. From that point on, his life is effectively over, even though it takes a while before the full impact hits home and, at least for a while, Jeff thinks he's managed to get away with his indulgence. By the time he begins relating his tale to Ann on the road trip to Lake Tahoe, he already senses that there's no escape, just like Walter Neff dictating his lonely confession in Double Indemnity. One of the recurring motifs in film noir is that confession doesn't do you any good. It just confirms, to borrow one of Jeff's phrases, how big a chump you can get to be. Highly recommended.