ROBERT MITCHUM FOLLOWS JANE GREER THROUGH 'OUT OF THE PAST'

Year: 1948 Rating: ***1/2

In Robert Siodmak's multi-tier film noir THE KILLERS, city-dwelling crime boss Albert Dekker recognizes former crooked colleague Burt Lancaster working in a rural, woodsy-located gas station, pulling the handsome femme-fatale-smitten anti-hero back into danger throughout a series of expository flashbacks... 

Exactly what ignites Jacques Tourneur's tour-de-force crime-melodrama OUT OF THE PAST, only it's towering goon Paul Valentine who finds Robert Mitchum, who is — unlike Lancaster — very much alive throughout... 

Virginia Huston and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

As we learn about his current situation using the token noir device of monotone narration, but with a twist: on the way to one of several expensive villas owned by gambling gangster Kirk Douglas, Mitchum tells local good girl/girlfriend Virginia Huston everything about the bad girl who forced him into this dizzily complicated predicament, harboring more of an ongoing theme than any kind of consistently cemented plot-line...

That there's nothing worse than a double-crossing dame: and while Jane Greer looks great with a full-lipped pout and alluring wide-eyes, her unending greed for boyfriend Douglas's money is never quite clear... 

Rhonda Fleming and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Low-budgeted RKO's answer to Warner Brothers' Lauren Bacall, Greer is simply too limited for the necessary born-to-possess-men/tempestuous expressions... that second-act-siren Rhonda Fleming's donning right off the bat...

Which is skipping ahead, involving Mitchum's San Fransisco-set wrong man dilemma, adding to every noir trope in the book... including the usual strong-silent-sap-who-will-do-anything-for-the-manipulative-woman after falling quickly/desperately for Greer, hidden in an obscure Mexican port town from Douglas: a ripped-off, bitterly-foiled heavy lacking any formidable power or palpable threat...

Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Which is why Mitchum never seems in genuine danger, making OUT OF THE PAST more of a breezy location-hopping adventure than the quintessentially taut thriller it's famous for being... yet there's no end to addictively painted corners he needs out of, and the audience is never uninvolved in what's a technically-sublime pulpy/page-turning experience considered "the greatest film noir ever made"...

That's really only half true since, while no other b-crimer works so hard to cover so much eclectic ground (from cascading nature-backdrops to darkened corridors to shadow-filled city streets), Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas's antagonizing character-development is sacrificed so that Mitchum's circular-traipsing-quest is all that really matters — from the beginning, middle and end. 

Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Paul Valentine and Mary Field in OUT OF THE PAST

Virginia Huston and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST with Jane Greer

Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST with Steve Brodie

Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Rhonda Fleming and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST

Virginia Huston and Dickie Moore in OUT OF THE PAST