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DVD Out of the Past
"Build my gallows high, baby"--just one of the quintessentially noir sentiments expressed by Robert Mitchum in this classic of the genre. Mitchum, in absolute prime, sleepy-eyed form, relates a complicated flashback about getting hired by gangster Kirk Douglas to find femme fatale Jane Greer. The chain of film noir elements--love, money, lies--drags Mitchum into the lower depths. Director Jacques Tourneur gets the edgy negotiations between men and women as exactly right as he gets the inky shadows of the noir landscape (even the sunlit exteriors are fraught with doubt). This is Mitchum in excelsis, with his usual laid-back cool laced with great dialogue and tragic foreshadowing. As for his co-star, James Agee immortally opined that Jane Greer "can best be described, in an ancient idiom, as a hot number." Remade in 1984, unhappily, as Against All Odds (with Greer in a supporting role). --Robert Horton
Great, iconic Noir with laconic Mitchum as the smitten schmuck who falls for the wrong femme fatale dame and follows her to the end. The femme fatale is gorgeous Jane Greer in probably her best role. Kirk Douglas turns in a great performance as a mob boss who's also suckered by the bad girl. Out of the Past is one of the best Noirs ever; perfectly capturing the grimness and inevitability of anguish inherent to the style. One great one-liner after another.
Witty, very entertaining film noir
If the splashy technicolor MGM musicals of the old Hollywood studio system represented the best of America, the B&W, often low-budget film noirs represented the country's dark underbelly. No one in a film noir is ever up to any good. Watching these dark souls double-cross and one-up each other is enormously entertaining.
"Out of the Past" is one of the most famous of its genre, largely because of the pitch-perfect casting and witty script. Robert Mitchum stars as Jeff Bailey, a gas station owner and former P.I. The movie begins with him telling his fiance Ann (Virginia Huston) about his past. Many years ago, he was hired by a gangster named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to track down Sterling's girlfriend, Kathie (Jane Greer). Kathie had shot Whit, and taken off with 40k to boot. Jeff tracks down Kathie in Mexico, but before long she seduces Jeff. Then she double crosses him, in effect framing him for a murder. Despite the knowledge that Kathie is immoral and treacherous, Jeff cannot get Kathie out of his system. He returns to Whit for a new "assignment", perhaps, subconsciously, to see Kathie again. There's more double-crossing and more murders, until finally Jeff says to Kathie, "We deserve each other."
This was one of Kirk Douglas's first films and he's very memorable as Whit. He plays Whit as rather friendly, bubbly, and seemingly sincere, yet undeniably sinister. i love how he subtly threatens Jeff: "You're on. I fire people, but nobody quits me. You started this and you'll end it." Whit's motives are rather ambiguous. Why does he want Kathie back so badly, when Kathie shot him and stole from him? A scene late in the movie suggests that Whit is fond of torture. Jane Greer's Kathie is, like all femme fatales, beautiful and alluring, with a husky voice. But Greer also gives Kathie a sympathetic personality, despite the fact that Kathie is a double-crossing murderer, liar, and thief. After all, despite her treachery, she claims she did it all so Jeff and her could return to Mexico. She murders and frames Jeff for these murders so she can hang onto him. Twisted, but then again in a film noir everyone is twisted. She is, as Jeff says, "a leaf blown from one gutter to another." Robert Mitchum as Jeff is also extremely memorable. His deep laconic voice and sleepy eyelids give Jeff a world-weary, cynical persona. Yet Jeff has a quick wit and a self-awareness that makes him a compelling hero. I love when Kathie brags, "See, you've only me to make deals with now?" and he responds, "Build my gallows high, baby." Or after Kathie asks him, "Aren't you going to feel sorry for me" and he shoots back, "I'm not going to try." Jeff is the movie's "everyman," but he also is way too willing to jump headfirst into the sick world of Whit and Kathie.
This film noir is particularly appealing in a way because of the strict Hollywood Hays code, that had many moral clauses and rules (such as a kiss could only be 3 seconds long, etc.) So the point of these movies was to suggest the taboo. One example is the way Jeff and Whit smoke. Whenever they meet, both of them start to chain-smoke, in a subtle kind of one-upmanship. Today, these characters might give each other the finger or say, "Up yours a__hole." But Wilt and Jeff just nonchalantly blow puffs of smoke into each other's faces. Another example is a scene with Jeff and Kathie. They kiss, and then the camera cuts away to a lamp being knocked onto the floor and the room darkening. It doesn't take much imagination to get the picture.
So, this is highly recommended. Witty, sick, sinister, entertaining, "Out of the Past" is exactly like Whit, Jeff, and Kathie.
Perfect noir
A dark stranger from the city rides into a simple small town. He has
some questions about the man with the mysterious past who owns the gas
station across from a nice family diner. After the two men talk, the
man with the mysterious past goes to fix loose threads he left behind
in a film that is nothing but noir.
Robert Mitchum plays Bailey, the snoop who falls in love with his
client's target: the dark and mysterious Kathie (Greer). Quick-tongued
and lethargic, he gracefully plunges deeper into the abyss of
uncertainty as he gets caught up in a power game between a man and his
girl, and the own pull of his desires versus what he knows is right for
him.
The acting of these characters as they tumble about their own
destruction is superb, but none moreso than the witty dialog that's
great even by film noir standards. The directing and cinematography are
perfect to, so that it's nearly impossible not to feel pulled along by
the roller-coaster ride towards doom. The action NEVER lets up, and
just when the film seems to catch its balance, it lunges right over.
Highly recommended to fans of noir and anyone who wants to look into
the genre, not to mention anybody who likes classics and just about
anybody else who has any reason to believe they should watch it.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Dick Powell will forever be known as a 1930s crooner in archetypal musical comedies, but this career-changing role shows Powell at his best and remains perhaps the most faithful cinematic representation of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled hero, Philip Marlowe, ever put on screen. In this adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely, Powell's cynical, smart-talking private eye is hired by a dim ex-con (pug-nosed Mike Mazurki) to find his girl Velma, and by the prissy stooge of a blackmail victim to babysit him during a handoff. The meeting ends with the stooge's death, and Marlowe is immediately engaged by the owner of some jewels, the wily Mrs. Grayle (Claire Trevor), to recover them. As Marlowe navigates the dark, dangerous world of wartime L.A., splitting his search between high-society... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dick Powell - Claire Trevor Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Alan Ladd is razor sharp as Raven, a contract killer who likes cats and kills witnesses. The first 15 minutes of this film is excellent noir. A hit man (Ladd) lives in a shabby hotel, when the smart mouthed maid enters to clean she slaps his kitten aside, prompting Ladd to knock her to the floor, tearing her dress. Ladd then proceeds to his first job in the film and on the way up the stairs en route to the apartment where his soon-to-be victim resides he encounters a girl in leg braces. Ladd is so good, as is the directing, we are not sure if he is going to retrieve the ball that has bounced out of her reach or blow her brains out with his Colt .32 pistol.
Also excellent is the photography, set between San Francisco and Los Angeles, many great shots include a gas works... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Veronica Lake - Alan Ladd Director(s): Frank Tuttle DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A certified film noir classic, Criss Cross embraces the genre's darkness with an uncompromising tale of doomed lovers and multilayered betrayal. Reuniting with director Robert Siodmak after their success with The Killers, Burt Lancaster plays a love-struck loser who seals his fate when he returns to Los Angeles to find his ex-wife (Yvonne DeCarlo) eager to rekindle their love against all better judgment. She encourages their torrid affair but marries a mobster (Dan Duryea); to deflect suspicion, Lancaster lures Duryea into an armored-truck robbery, creating a vortex of greed and passion from which he cannot escape. Featuring the brief screen debut of Tony Curtis, Criss Cross is a stylish masterpiece of clashing fates and fatal attractions; Franz Planer's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Burt Lancaster - Yvonne De Carlo Director(s): Robert Siodmak DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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What if you were asked to investigate a murder in which you were the prime suspect? From this seemingly impossible notion comes a grandly entertaining nail-biter. Charles Laughton plays the punctuality obsessed, slave-driving head of a publishing empire who won't let his crime magazine's star editor (Ray Milland) take a day off to spend with his family. The overworked Milland, having just upset a delayed honeymoon trip for the umpteenth time, goes on a sorrow-drowning, bar-hopping bender with a mysterious woman who, it turns out, is Laughton's mistress. Later that night after Milland has gone home, Laughton murders her, and the next day he assigns Milland to investigate, since a number of clues point to her having spent time with another man that night. Milland, then, must not only find... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ray Milland - Maureen O'Sullivan Director(s): John Farrow DVD Release Date: Released the 06 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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