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Home , Berlin Express, Dickie Moore (actor), Jacques Tourneur, Jane Greer, Nicholas Musuraca, Out of the Past

September 13, 2016 (XXXIII:4) : (1947, 97 min)

DIRECTED BY Jacques Tourneur WRITTEN BY Daniel Mainwaring (screenplay/novel, as Geoffrey Homes), James M. Cain (uncredited) and Frank Fenton (uncredited) PRODUCED BY Warren Duff MUSIC CINEMATOGRAPHY EDITOR Samuel E. Beetley ART DIRECTION Albert S. D'Agostino and Jack Okey SET DECORATION Darrell Silvera COSTUME DESIGN Edward Stevenson VISUAL EFFECTS Linwood G. Dunn

National Film Registry, 1991

CAST …Jeff …Kathie different genres, all showing a great command of mood and …Whit atmosphere.” In the and ‘60s he also did a significant …Meta Carson amount of TV work on such series as “The Barbara Stanwyk Richard Webb…Jim Show,” “The Twilight Zone,” and “Bonanza.” Some of …Fisher Tourneur’s other are Wichita (1955), Virginia Huston…Ann (1948), Days of Glory (1944) and Paul Valentine….Joe (1943). …The Kid Ken Niles….Eels DANIEL MAINWARING (b. February 27, 1902 in Oakland, —d. January 31, 1977 in , California) is a JACQUES TOURNEUR (b. November 12, 1904 in —d. 19 novelist who also scripted 45 films, among them December, 1977 in Bergerac, ) went to Hollywood in The George Raft Story (1961), Space Master X-7 (1958, aka 1913 with his father, director . Starting out as Blood Ruse and Mutiny in Outer Space), Cole Younger, a script clerk and editor for his father, the younger Tourneur Gunfighter (1958), Baby Face Nelson (1957), Invasion of the then graduated to such jobs as directing shorts (often with the Body Snatchers (1956), The Phoenix City Story (1955), This pseudonym Jack Turner), both in France and America. He was Woman Is Dangerous (1952), They Made Me a Killer (1946), hired to run the second unit for David O. Selznick's A Tale of Tokyo Rose (1946) and Secrets of the Underground (1942). Two Cities (1935) where he first met . In 1942, when Lewton was named to head the new horror unit at RKO, JAMES M. CAIN (b. July 1, 1892, Annapolis, Maryland—d. he asked Tourneur to be his first director. The result was the October 27, 1977, University Park, Maryland) was a prolific highly artistic (and commercially successful) Cat People (1942). novelist whose work was frequently made into major films, for Some consider the three low-budget films Jacques Tourneur example, The Postman Always Rings Twice, , made with iconic producer Lewton the greatest works of the B- and Mildred Pierce. Born and raised on the East Coast and movie genre, Tourneur went on to direct masterpieces in many trained as a journalist, Cain moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s,

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—2 around the time his first book was published. He returned to the stress caused him to suffer temporary blindness. About this East Coast about 15 years later, but it was in Los Angeles, a time, he began to obtain small roles in films, appearing in place he had conflicting feelings about, that Cain had his dozens within a very brief time. In 1945, he was cast as Lt. greatest success. Cain was in high demand in Hollywood, but Walker in The Story of G.I. Joe, and received an Oscar the relationship was fraught. A complete rewrite he did of the nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His star ascended rapidly, screenplay Out of the Past had to be rewritten again after he was and he became an icon of ‘40s , though equally adept at done. Westerns and romantic dramas. His apparently lazy style and seen-it-all demeanor proved highly attractive to men and NICHOLAS MUSURACA (b. October 25, 1892, Italy—d. women, and by the 1950s he was a true superstar. This despite a September 3, 1985, Los Angeles, California) Italian-born brief prison term for marijuana usage in 1949, which seemed to Nicholas Musuraca's first job in the film business was as a enhance rather than diminish his "bad boy" appeal. Though chauffeur to early pioneering producer/director J. Stuart seemingly dismissive of "art", he worked in tremendously Blackton. Having a knack for photography, he worked behind artistically thoughtful projects such as Charles Laughton's Night the cameras in a variety of jobs before finally becoming a of the Hunter, and even co-wrote and composed an oratorio cinematographer (or, as they were called in those days, "lighting produced at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. A master of cameraman"). Musuraca spent most of his career at RKO accents and seemingly unconcerned about his star image, he Pictures, where he became known as a master of lighting--he played in both forgettable and unforgettable films with was once admiringly described by a fellow cameraman as "a unswerving nonchalance, leading many to overlook the painter with light"--and was largely responsible for the gritty, prodigious talent he could bring to a project which he found moody camerawork that compelling. He moved into became that studio's signature. television in the Eighties as his He was nominated for an film opportunities diminished, Academy Award for his work winning new fans with "The on I Remember Mama (1948). Winds of War" and "War and After leaving RKO in the late Remembrance".” Some of his 130 '50s he worked for a short films: Dead Man (1995), Cape period at Warner Bros., but Fear (1991), That Championship then joined Desilu Studios and Season (1982), The Big Sleep spent the remainder of his (1978), The Last Tycoon (1976), career in television. Musuraca The Friends of Eddie Coyle was cinematographer or d.p. (1973), Ryan's Daughter (1970), on about 175 films, among The Longest Day (1962), Cape them A Girl in Every Port, Fear (1962), Thunder Road (1952), I Married a (1958), Heaven Knows, Mr. Communist (1950), I Allison (1957), Not as a Stranger Remember Mama (1948), The (1955), The Night of the Hunter Bachelor and the BobbySoxer (1955), Track of the Cat (1954), (1947), Bedlam (1946), The River of No Return (1954), The Spiral Staircase (1946), (1945), The Curse of Lusty Men (1952), The Red Pony (1949), Rachel and the the Cat People (1944), Bombardier (1943), Cat People (1942), Stranger (1948), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) and Hoppy Lady Scarface (1941), Golden Boy (1939), and On the Banks of Serves a Writ (1943). He produced and wrote Thunder Road the Wabash (1923). (1958), and wrote the film’s song, “Wippoorwill,” which became a hit record. ROBERT MITCHUM (b. August 6, 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut—d. July 1, 1997 in Santa Barbara, California) is an JANE GREER (b. “Bettejane” Greer on September 9, 1924, in underrated American leading man of enormous ability who Washington, D.C.—d. August 20, 2001, Los Angeles). “If she'd sublimates his talents beneath an air of disinterest. Born to a never made another movie,” wrote Leonard Maltin, “this angelic railroad worker who died in a train accident when Robert was brunette would rate an entry in this book for her portrayal of the two, Mitchum and his siblings (including brother, John icy, manipulative temptress who makes chumps of both Robert Mitchum, later also an actor) were raised by his mother and Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in the film noir classic Out of the step-father (a British army major) in Connecticut, New York, Past.” As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a and Delaware. An early contempt for authority led to discipline teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she problems, and Mitchum spent good portions of his teen years was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's adventuring on the open road. On one of these trips, at the age orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met of 14, he was charged with vagrancy and sentenced to a Georgia Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also chain gang, from which he escaped. Working a wide variety of enjoyed a brief stint as a singer. At age 15, an attack of palsy jobs (including ghostwriter for astrologist Carroll Righter), left her face partially paralyzed. She claimed that it was through Mitchum discovered acting in a Long Beach, California amateur facial exercises to overcome the paralysis that she learned the theatre company. He worked at Lockheed Aircraft, where job efficacy of facial expression in conveying human emotion, a

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—3 skill she was renowned for using in her acting. be a top leading man, Douglas played a thinly disguised Bix became attracted to Greer and brought her to Hollywood after Beiderbecke in Young Man With a Horn (1950), the "gentleman he saw her in Life magazine, modeling army uniforms for caller" in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (1950), a women. Deciding that Bettejane was too "ingenuish", she heartlessly ambitious reporter in Ace in the Hole (aka The Big shortened her name to Jane for her billing in the film, Dick Carnival), a two-fisted cop in Detective Story (both 1951), a Tracy (1945). According to lore, Quickly married crooner Rudy frontiersman in The Big Sky, a ruthless movie producer in The Vallee after fleeing a possessed Howard Hughes, who kept her Bad and the Beautiful (both 1952, the latter Oscar nominated), virtually a prisoner during her first few months. An enraged an intrepid seaman in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954, in Hughes pressured her and ruined the marriage. She returned to which he sang "A Whale of a Tale"), the title role in Ulysses Hughes and her contract. She acted in approximately 20 movies, (1955), a sharp-tongued cowpoke in Man Without a Star (1955), among them Perfect Mate (1996), Against All Odds (1984), Man artist Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956, again, Oscar- of a Thousand Faces (1957), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), and nominated), gambler/gunfighter Doc Holliday in Gunfight at the Sinbad the Sailor (1947). She also did a lot of TV series work— O.K. Corral and a war-sickened colonel in Paths of Glory (both “Quincy,” Murder, She Wrote,” “Bonanza,” and, perhaps most 1957). Douglas infused every role with passion, and his notably, four episodes of “Twin Peaks” in 1990. performances were often multilayered ones; he could bring sinister traits to sympathetic characters, and vice versa. Something in his eyes, in his voice, behind that toothy grin, suggested lurking menace in some characters and suppressed mirth in others. He formed his own production company, Bryna, in 1958; its initial venture was a big-scale adventure film, The Vikings (1958), followed by The Devil's Disciple (1959), which was a coproduction with Lancaster's company, and the sexy melodrama Strangers When We Meet (1960). That same year also saw the release of Douglas' most ambitious film, the epic drama of Roman Empire days, Spartacus, as its producer, he broke a long-standing Hollywood blacklist by insisting that scripter Dalton Trumbo (a member of the "Hollywood Ten") get proper screen credit for his contribution. Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with a decided emphasis on Westerns and war films; among the more notable were Town Without Pity, The Last Sunset (both 1961), the cult "modern" Lonely Are the Brave, Two Weeks in Another Town (both 1962, the latter a semi-sequel to The Bad and the Beautiful), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in KIRK DOUGLAS (b. Issur Danielovitch Demsky on December 9, May (1964), In Harm's Way (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow 1916 in Amsterdam, NY) was nominated for three best actor (1966), The War Wagon (1967), The Brotherhood (1968), The Oscars: for Champion (1950), The Bad and the Beautiful (1953), Arrangement (1969), A Gunfight (1971), and two that he and Lust for Life (1957), but the only one he ever got was an directed: Scalawag (1973) and Posse (1975). Thereafter he Honorary Award in 1996. His ready grin, granite-chiseled concentrated on character roles in such varied fare as Once Is features, cleft chin, and an approach to acting that made him Not Enough (also 1975), The Fury (1978), Home Movies (a equally convincing in both sympathetic and unsympathetic roles hilarious turn as an egocentric star), The Villain (bravely made Douglas one of the brightest stars of post-WWII mocking movie-Western villainy in a ham-fisted, cartoonish Hollywood (and, later, the international arena as well). Born parody, both 1979), The Final Countdown (1980), The Man into immigrant poverty, he saw an acting scholarship as his From Snowy River (1982, in a dual role for this Down-Under ticket out of the ghetto. He secured small roles on Broadway "Western"), and Tough Guys (1986, his last film with before entering the Navy in the second World War, and Lancaster). And though he abandoned the first Rambo film, afterward resumed his stage career. His old classmate Lauren First Blood early in its production, he eventually worked with Bacall suggested that producer Hal Wallis test him, resulting in star Sylvester Stallone in Oscar (1991). More recently he was his being cast in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha cast as Michael J. Fox's crafty uncle in Greedy (1994). His Ivers (1946). Douglas won excellent reviews, which encouraged autobiography, The Ragman's Son (1988), was a best-seller, and him to remain in Hollywood, and in 1947 he made the classic in recent years he has expanded his literary career to writing noir Out of the Past, the film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's novels as well, most notably The Gift. Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and the undernourished drama I Walk Alone (the first of several films with close friend RHONDA FLEMING (b. 10 August 1923, Hollywood) was in ). Douglas also had a key role in the A Letter to about 50 films, the most recent of them being the television Three Wives (1949), then scored a knockout as the venal boxer Waiting for the Wind (1990), which reunited her with her former Midge Kelly in that year's Champion (1949) a classic co-star, Robert Mitchum. Some of the others included The Nude prizefighting drama that cemented his stardom and earned him Bomb (1980), (1959), Home Before Dark his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Now acknowledged to (1958), The Buster Keaton Story (1957), Gunfight at the O.K.

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—4

Corral (1957), The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951), The Great obsessions: “to suddenly introduce something inexplicable Lover (1949), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court into the shot, such as, for instance, the hand on the (1949), and Spellbound (1945). In addition to motion pictures, balustrade. . . in Curse of the Demon; in the reverse shot Miss Fleming starred in her Broadway debut in Clare Booth the hand isn’t there any more.” Luce's “The Women”, and in the role of Lalume in “Kismit” at the Los Angeles Music Center, and toured as Madame Dubonnet in “The Boyfriend”. She made her stage musical debut in at the opening of the new Tropicana Hotel's showroom. Later, she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in a one- woman concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin compositions. She, , and were once part of a traveling gospel quartet at their church called "The Four Girls" and made an album called "Make a Joyful Noise" that sold over a million copies.

STEVE BRODIE (b. November 25, 1919 in El Dorado, – d. January 9, 1992 in Los Angeles, California) was primarily known as a "B" movie bad guy of hundreds of films. He broke into films after being spotted by an MGM talent scout in a Hollywood theatre production entitled "Money Girls". Loaned out for his first film, Universal's Ladies Courageous (1944), Brodie appeared in a few tough-guy bit parts in such MGM films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), The Clock (1945) and Anchors Aweigh (1945) before he was dropped. It wasn't long before he was signed by RKO and it was with studio that his reputation as a heavy in westerns grew, with such roles as notorious outlaws Bob Dalton in Badman's Territory (1946) and Cole Younger in Return of the Bad Men Cole (1948). In between those two pictures were strong roles in three film noir classics: Desperate (1947) as the leading good guy, and a supporting baddie in Crossfire (1947) and Out of the Past (1947). A hard- According to Jacques Tourneur, his father “was living, hard-drinking actor, Brodie married "B" actress Lois passionately interested in scientific, medical, and Andrews in 1946 but the couple divorced four years later, not philosophical research. He had an incredible library and long after appearing together in the western programmer followed all the discoveries in psychoanalysis very Rustlers (1949). A familiar presence on 1950s and 1960s TV, he closely. It is through him that I discovered Freud, Jung, worked on such crime series as Public Defender (1954), Adler, Havelock Ellis. I never read novels, only essays, (1959), Perry Mason (1957), Burke's Law (1963) scientific works. They are much more exciting. I was and such western series as The Life and Legend of (1955) (recurring part), The Lone Ranger (1949), Adventures of already fascinated by the cinema and my father bought Wild Bill Hickok (1951), Laramie (1959), (1957), story ideas from me for ten dollars apiece. At that time he Maverick (1957), Rawhide (1959), Gunsmoke (1955) and was a very important filmmaker in America.” comedies including The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1952) Indeed, by the end of World War I, Maurice and The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). Tourneur was head of his own production company and generally regarded as the greatest aesthetician of the JACQUES TOURNEUR from World Film Directors, American cinema. In 1918 he moved his company to V.I. Ed. John Wakeman. H.W. Wilson Co. NY 1987. Hollywood, where the following year Jacques Tourneur became an American citizen. In 1922 Jacques appeared as Born in Paris, son of Maurice Thomas, better known as an extra in Rex Ingram’s Scaramouche, and in 1924, Maurice Tourneur. Originally an artist, the elder Tourneur finishing high school he went to MGM as a script clerk. adopted his pseudonym when he became a stage actor and He worked in the same capacity for his father in 1925- director and retained it when he joined the film production 1926, but in the latter year Maurice Tourneur, whose company Eclair. Hollywood career was in decline, returned to Europe. He His father was an aesthete and a solitary, cynical left his son a hundred dollar bill and the suggestion that he and sarcastic. . . .If he misbehaved , his parents “would put try and make it to Europe himself. the maid in the cupboard and she used to jiggle a bowler Jacques Tourneur did not at first take advantage of hat while my parents would tell me: ‘That’s the terrible this offer, instead finding odd jobs in Hollywood as an Thunderman.’” Tourneur believed that this grotesque actor and usher. But in 1927 his father invited him to punishment was the root of one of his cinematic Germany to work on Das Schiff der verlorene Menschen

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—5

(Ship of Lost Men), and this time he went. He served as his merely records but draws us implacably into a dark father’s editor and assistant on this film and then on a spider’s web of conflicting emotions.” series of talkies made in Paris for Pathé-Nathan in 1929- Out of the Past shares the cynicism and downbeat 1934. It was during this time that Jacques Tourneur sophistication of such contemporary thrillers as Howard directed his own first movies for the same company, Hawks’ The Big Sleep (and is almost as well-written as beginning in 1931 with Tout ça ne vaut pas l’amour (None that film). Feminist critics have condemned its portrayal of That’s Worth Love). of Kathie Moffat as “a personification of the bitch goddess archetype,” and Stephen Farber has made the interesting In 1934 Tourneur broke away from his father and returned suggestion that the frequency with which such anti- to Hollywood. heroines appeared in the movies of the period “reflected Tourneur had worked with Val Lewton on the the fantasies and fears of a wartime society, in which crowd scenes in A Tale of Two Cities, and in 1942 he women had taken control of many of the positions began his seven-year association with RKO, where customarily held by men.” Lewton was then working as a producer. Their first movie grew out of a party “I hate the expression ‘horror conversation—a film,’” Jacques Tourneur said. suggestion that “Cat “For me, I make films about the People” was an oddly supernatural because I believe in suggestive title from it. I believe in the power of the which a thriller could be dead, witches. derived. . . . Cat People has been called “the first None of Tourneur’s subsequent monster film to refrain [after Curse of the Demon from showing us the (1957)] films were of anything monster.” . . .It did like the same quality, being immensely well at the ruined by poor scripts or box office. Together with interfering producers. He Lewton’s other low- recognized this himself and budget thrillers and made his last “very bad” picture Hitchcock’s Suspicion, it in 1965. Before and after that he saved the studio, which worked in television, a medium at that time was in great financial difficulty. he despised. His Positif interview with Bertrand Tavernier Robin Wood says that “its packed, complex and gives some useful insights into his working methods—his suggestive” dream sequence “concisely embodies the concern for realism in the way his actors spoke, moved, film’s sense of life itself as a shadow-world in which entered a room with which they were supposed to be nothing is certain, no issue is clear-cut, nothing is what it familiar or unfamiliar; above all, the importance he seems.” Woods calls Cat People “a small masterpiece— attached to light. perhaps the most delicate poetic fantasy in the American Tourneur said he had one basic principle he cinema. always imposed on his cameramen: “Only use natural, logical sources of light ( a window, a lamp) and you must “To show that, unconsciously, we all live in fear—that is be able to see this source in every single shot. The genuine horror,” Tourneur wrote. presence of the light must be very concrete, you should be able to feel it. Cameramen hate that kind of thing because Back at RKO, Tourneur made another film which— they have to rack their brains trying to find new solutions underrated at the time—has achieved the status of “a every time” but “in this way I also obtain very heavy classic B-picture,” Out of the Past (1947). contrasts which often lend dignity and truth to the human Since then, Out of the Past has come to be relationships. . . .It also changes the acting. . . .For recognized as one of the best films noirs of the immediate instance, a young woman in order to be able to read a postwar years, beautifully played by Mitchum and Greer, letter, will go to the oil lamp or to the window. . . . and lit and photographed to marvelous atmospheric effect Another actor will unconsciously lower his voice. . . .I by Nicholas Musuraca, who had been Tourneur’s look for a very strong visual unity by using a type of camerman on all three of his films with Lewton. It has framing and camera movement that is very simple. been called “one of Tourneur’s [visually] most elaborate Everything must come from inside. It mustn’t be works,” telling its story “through a camera which never superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—6 lenses.” are living presences in his work, while emotion and drama speak very softly, the better to show how deeply they are For Robin Wood, Tourneur’s camera style, “which is the affected by the physical world around them—which is most distinctive feature of his heterogeneous oeuvre, has why I think the films have such a hypnotic quality. two chief characteristics, movement and distance. The fluid long takes that keep the characters in long shot And there is also a suggestion of magic at the oddest within the shadowy environments, branches, and foliage moments in Tourneur’s work. Look at the scene in Out of obtruding darkly in the foreground, greatly enhance the the Past where Dickie Moore saves Robert Mitchum by haunting, sinister atmosphere of the suspense sequences; hooking the arm of the man who’s trying to kill him with they also help to preserve the objectivity with which his fishing line and yanking him to his death. Tourneur Tourneur customarily views his characters and on which films this scene in a unique way—where any other the ambiguities of the horror movies depend.” director would have pumped music into the background and cut to close-ups of a struggle, Tourneur lets us listen He and his wife lived in a Hollywood duplex, furnished to the rushing water of the river below and shoots the with “quiet but exquisite taste,” that once belonged to F. action mostly in long shot, giving it a strange, dreamlike Scott Fitzgerald. inevitability. He’s one of those directors whose work renews your enthusiasm for movies—whenever I look at one of his films on tape or on screen, I remember why I wanted to make movies in the first place. The craft, taste, and extraordinary fluid artistry of his cinema makes most other movies look bloated and synthetic.

Tourneur said in 1977, the year of his death: “I always did what I wanted. I never turned down a script.” His refusal to acknowledge a contradiction between these two propositions suggests why the division between stylists and directors with a worldview, fundamental to Andrew Sarris’s auteur system, is irrelevant to Tourneur.

The typical Tourneur narrative is full of confusion and ambiguity, signs that point in no clear direction, and messages that circle back on the sender. The director’s Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. Chris narrative and stylistic choices constantly underline Fujiwara. Foreword by . Johns absence and distance. Significant events take place Hopkins U Press, Baltimore.London 1998. Martin offscreen or before the start of the film; exposition is Scorsese’s foreword: omitted or, when needed, made empty or incomprehensible, so that the motives of characters, even Tourneur was an artist of atmospheres. For many the protagonists, remain mysterious to the audience. directors, an atmosphere is something that is Tourneur’s films revolve around communications that are “established,” setting the stage for the action to follow. misunderstood or blocked: “The Incredible Stranger” and For Tourneur it is the movie, and each of his movies Out of the Past both feature mute characters. boasts a distinctive atmosphere, with a profound sensitivity to light and shadow, and a very unusual Tourneur loves situations that allow him to present relationship between characters and environment—the characters and story ambiguously. way people move through space in Tourneur movies, the way they simply handle objects, is always special, Like Ford, Tourneur edited with the camera: “It’s an old different form other films. Bertrand Tavernier and Jean- editor’s habit. I always shoot so few shots that the Pierre Coursodon have noted that Tourneur tended to producer can’t do anything other than what I filmed.” record dialogue at low levels, and he always encouraged his actors to underplay (which must be why he preferred If Out of the Past seems in some ways like a typical film to work with minimalists like Robert Mitchum, Dana noir, this is only because Tourneur’s constant Andrews, or ) and to move at a slightly preoccupations—the unreliability of appearances, the slower pace than usual. Places, objects and atmospheres helplessness of people to resist their obsessions and avoid

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—7 becoming the victims of an apparently impersonal fate— must the films noirs of Preminger, Ophuls, and Welles). are also those of the genre. Tourneur places these concerns within a context marked by his realism, humanism, and This film humanizes its (the sixth noir love for aesthetic fascination and mystery. feature). Ann could be speaking for Tourneur when she The film constantly calls out attention to the says about Kathie: “She can’t be all bad. No one is.” Jeff’s ambiguity of external behavior, a strategy that causes us to reply—“She comes the closest”—is characteristically perceive the characters as possessing greater depth and hardboiled and at the same time revealing. Kathie mystery than those of most films noirs; we sense that they approaches being “all bad.” The difference that remains, have thoughts, feelings, and qualities that they hold in however small, is the measure of what in her is still human reserve. and irreducible to formulae like “femme fatale”; it is also the measure of Tourneur’s permanent refusal to judge his Let’s list the prototypically “noir” features of Out of the characters. Past, without analyzing (since this task has been done exhaustively) the significance of the features to the genre or worrying whether they are rigorously described: 1) a first-person voice-over narration (for, at any rate, part of the film); (2) a sense of the inadequacy of American “normal life” and economic and social institutions to contain the threat, or compensate for the attractions, represented by the “noir” world of crime and passion; (3) a preponderance of scenes that take place at night and in cities; (4) the use of certain visual patterns, especially emphasizing the presence of dark areas in the frame; (5) a private detective as hero; (6) a femme fatale; and (7) the entrapment of the hero by a fate that finally destroys him. on Out of the Past (18 July 2004): Out of the Past exhibits some of these features in what Most crime movies begin in the present and move might be called their classical forms but uses them for forward, but film noir coils back into the past. The noir artistic purposes. Others it turns against themselves. hero is doomed before the story begins -- by fate, rotten Regarding first-person voice-over narration, Out of the luck, or his own flawed character. Crime movies Past preserves the convention of having the hero recount sometimes show good men who go bad. The noir hero is past events—which are shown in flashback accompanied never good, just kidding himself, living in ignorance of his by his voice-over—to another character, in this case Ann, dark side until events demonstrate it to him. while the two are driving from Bridgeport to Lake Tahoe. Out of the Past (1947) is one of the greatest of all Since Ann is Jeff’s girlfriend, and since the story film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his he tells is concerned with his relation with another past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with woman, addressing the narration to Ann has a certain a new job and a new girl. The movie stars Robert shock, which the film does not mitigate, but rather Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose consciously underlines by returning briefly to the car in very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, the middle of the flashback, allowing us to see Ann’s made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before reaction. . . . we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for Some essential features of noir style, as defined by Place him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and and Peterson, are either absent or deemphasized in Out of now his old life reaches out and pulls him back. the Past. Tourneur and Musuraca never use the wide- Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, whose name was Jeff angle lens for grotesque close-up effects, nor do they favor Markham when he was working as a private eye out of close-ups in general, particularly the “obtrusive and New York. In those days he was hired by a gangster disturbing” choker close-ups often use in films noirs. named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas, electrifying in an Whereas many noir directors deprive the viewer of spatial early role) to track down a woman named Kathie Moffat orientation by avoiding establishing long shots, Tourneur (Jane Greer, irresistibly mixing sexiness and treachery). (like Hawks and Walsh) almost invariably favors such Kathie shot Sterling four times, hitting him once, and shots and almost never resorts to the shock effect created supposedly left with $40,000 of his money. Sterling wants by cutting between long shot and close-up. Finally, if Jeff to bring her back. It's not, he says, that he wants Place and Peterson’s contention that “camera movements revenge: "I just want her back. When you see her, you'll are used sparingly in most noir films” is granted as valid, understand better." Out of the Past must be counted a major exception (and so That whole story, and a lot more, is told in a

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—8 flashback. When we meet Jeff at the beginning of the film, "No, no." it's in an idyllic setting by a lake in the Sierras, where he "Because there's more cigarette smoking in this has his arm around the woman he loves, Ann (Virginia movie than in any other movie I've ever seen." Huston). He bends over to kiss her when they're "We never thought about it. We just smoked. And interrupted by Jimmy (Dickie Moore), the deaf and mute I'm not impressed by that because I don't, honest to God, kid who works for him at the station. Jimmy uses sign know that I've ever actually seen the film." language to say a stranger is at the station, asking for him. "You've never seen it?" This man is Sterling's hired gun, named Joe Stephanos "I'm sure I have, but it's been so long that I don't (Paul Valentine), and he tells Jeff that Sterling wants to know." see him in his lodge on Lake Tahoe. That was Mitchum for you, a superb actor who Jeff takes Ann along on the all-night drive to affected a weary indifference to his work. Tahoe, using the trip to tell her his story -- his real name, There is a lot of smoking in Out of the Past. There his real past, how he tracked Kathie Moffat to Mexico and is a lot of smoking in all noirs, even the modern ones, fell in love with her. ("And then I saw her, coming out of because it goes with the territory. Good health, for noir the sun, and I knew why Whit didn't care about that 40 characters, starts with not getting killed. But few movies grand.") He tells Ann use smoking as well more, too: How he lied to as this one; in their Sterling about finding scenes together, it Kathie, how he and would be fair to say Kathie slipped away to that Mitchum and and Douglas smoke at thought they could live each other, in a free of the past, how they sublimated form of were spotted by Fisher fencing. The director (Steve Brodie), Jeff's is Jacques Tourneur, former partner. Fisher a master of dark followed them to a drama at RKO, also remote cabin, where famous for Cat Kathie shot him dead, People (1942) and I leaving Jeff behind with Walked with a the body and a bank book Zombie (1943). He is revealing she indeed had working here for the stolen the $40,000. third time with the The story takes cinematographer Jeff all night to tell, and lasts 40 minutes into the film. Nicholas Musuraca, a master of shadow but also of light, Then we're back in the present again, at the gates of and Musuraca throws light into the empty space between Sterling's lodge. Ann drives away and Jeff walks up the the two actors, so that when they exhale, the smoke is drive to square with his past. In the lodge, not really to his visible as bright white clouds. surprise, he finds that Kathie is once again with Sterling. Mitchum and Douglas think the story involves a This Sterling is a piece of work. Not only has he taken contest of wills between them, when in fact, they're both Kathie back after she shot him, he wants to hire Jeff again the instruments of corrupt women. Kathie betrays both after he betrayed him. This time he needs him to deal with men more than once, and there is also Meta Carson Leonard Eels, an accountant in San Francisco who keeps (Rhonda Fleming), the sultry "secretary" of Eels the Sterling's books, and is blackmailing him with threats accountant. What's fascinating is the way Jeff, the involving the IRS. Mitchum character, goes ahead, despite knowing what's The meeting between Mitchum and Douglas being done to him. How he gets involved once again with opens on a note of humor so quiet, it may pass unnoticed. Sterling and Kathie, despite all their history together, and "Cigarette?" offers Douglas. "Smoking," said Mitchum, how he agrees when Meta suggests a meeting with Eels, holding up his hand with a cigarette in it. Something about even though he knows and even says"I think I'm in a that moment has always struck me as odd, as somehow frame," and points out that he's been given a drink so that outside the movie, and I asked Mitchum about it after a his prints will be on the glass. screening of Out of the Past at the Virginia Film Festival. The scenes in San Francisco, involving the murder "Did you guys have any idea of doing a running gag of Eels, the whereabouts of the tax records and the double- involving cigarette smoking?" I asked him. dealing of Meta Carson, are so labyrinthine, it's

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—9 remarkable even the characters can figure out who is one draft featured awful voice-over narration by the deaf- being double-crossed, and why. The details don't matter. mute. Cain's script was a total rewrite and even worse; it What matters is the way that Jeff, a street-wise tough guy, was totally discarded. The great dialogue was actually the gets involved in the face of all common sense, senses a work of Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer whose best trap, thinks he can walk through it, and is still fascinated known credit was John Ford's Wings of Eagles." by Kathie Moffat. Listen to the contempt with which Sterling He first reveals his obsession in Mexico, when Kathie silences his hired gun, Stephanos: "Smoke a cigarette, claims she didn't take the 40 grand. Joe." And "Think of a number, Joe." Listen to Joe tell Jeff "But I didn't take anything. I didn't, Jeff. Don't how he found his gas station: "It's a small world." Jeff: you believe me?" "Yeah. Or a big sign." Kathie saying "I hate him. I'm sorry "Baby, I don't care." he didn't die." Jeff: "Give him time." Jeff's friend the cab And later, although he tells her, "You're like a leaf driver, assigned to tail Meta Carson: "I lost her." Jeff: that the wind blows from one gutter to another," he is "She's worth losing." Jeff to Kathie: "Just get out, will attracted to her, lured as men sometimes are to what they you? I have to sleep in this room." Kathie to Jeff: "You're know is wrong and dangerous. no good, and neither am I. That's why we deserve each Film noir is known for its wise-guy dialogue, but other." And in the movie's most famous exchange, Kathie the screenplay for Out of the Past reads like an anthology telling him, "I don't want to die." Jeff: "Neither do I, baby, of one-liners. It was based on the 1946 novel Build My but if I have to, I'm going to die last." Gallows High by "Geoffrey Homes," a pseudonym for the The movie's final scene, between the hometown blacklisted Daniel Mainwaring, and the screenplay credit girl Ann and Jimmy, Jeff's hired kid at the gas station, goes to Mainwaring, reportedly with extra dialogue by reflects the moral murkiness of the film with its quiet James M. Cain. ambiguity. I won't reveal the details, but as Jimmy But the critic Jeff Schwager read all versions of answers Ann's question, is he telling her what he believes, the screenplay for a 1990 Film Comment article, and what he thinks she wants to believe, or what he thinks it writes me: "Mainwaring's script was not very good, and in will be best for her to believe?

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2016 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXIII:

Tourneur—OUT OF THE PAST—10

Sept 27 Yasujiro Ozu Late Spring 1949 Oct 4 Joseph L. Mankiewicz All About Eve 1950 Oct 11 Federico Fellini La Dolce Vita 1960 Oct 18 Orson Welles Chimes at Midnight 1966 Oct 25 Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling The Drums of Winter 1977 Nov 1 Hal Ashby Being There 1979 Nov 8 Brian De Palma The Untouchables 1987 Nov 15 Norman Jewison Moonstruck 1987 Nov 22 Andrei Tarkovsky The Sacrifice 1986 Nov 29 Alfonso Arau Like Water for Chocolate 1992 Dec 6 Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck The Tourist 2010

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