Exclusive“Out of the Past” (1947): First Film Noir

I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. You're the femme fatale with the smoking gun and the cigarette. There's the no good Nick, the done you wrong. Now all we need is a guy with a trench coat and a fedora. What are you talking about? I can't believe it. I've been transported into a film noir. What? I can't believe it. I've been transported into a... No, no, I got that. What was that name you said? Film noir. One of the most famous classic film genres. Well, this happens to be a 1940s melodrama. Yeah, but that's what you call it. Film noir with the private eye and the smoking gun. I know all about classic movies and that's what they're called. My dear young lady, you are in need of some enlightenment out of the past. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. Film noir is the most talked about category for classic films. Even people who know little to nothing about old movies have heard that term and they love to use it like a buzzword. They're like, oh, film noir. They like it, it's French, it's fancy. It's true, but unfortunately it's not just people who know nothing about films or especially old films that use that term. It's become such a byword now that it's even widely accepted by some real experts. Like Eddie Muller on Turner Classic Movies or TCM calls himself the czar of noir. He's got a whole channel, not channel, but a whole show about it. Yes, that's his thing, but that's true. Film historians and critics have been analyzing what defines a film noir for decades and it's such a catch word because it just makes people feel so knowledgeable and classy when they use that French term. And to the point that if there is such a thing as film noir, which is sort of a debatable point, there is a very definite type of film that it is and now people apply it to almost anything. If it's in black and white, basically they'll call it film noir. Sometimes even if it's not. If it has anything remotely dark in it. So to really talk about what a film noir is and isn't, let's discuss our choice for today. Out of the Past, from 1947, has been called the ultimate film noir. And if there is such a thing as film noir, I'd have to say this movie is a great example. It definitely hits all the stereotypes. It stars Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. It was made by RKO Radio Pictures and directed by Jacques Tourneau. It centers around a man who owns a gas station in a little town in California. But it turns out that he has a secret which comes from out of his past. He was a private eye years ago who was hired for an interesting job. This gangster thug, played by Kirk Douglas, hired him to track down his lady friend who shot him, not fatally, and escaped, he claims, with $40,000. Jeff, Robert Mitchum's character, trails the glamorous lady to Mexico where he runs into her and as soon as he sees the beautiful young woman, he himself is smitten. And pretty soon he forgets about his job and decides that he wants this girl all for himself. So he and Kathy Moffat, who is Jane Greer's character, end up escaping Kirk Douglas's clutches and going to San Francisco where they happily are together for a little while until his former business partner catches up with him and before long, Kathy ends up shooting this guy to keep him from revealing her secret and her location to Kirk Douglas, but she's gone in the night, leaving Robert Mitchum realizing that she really was no good. So he tries to start a new life for himself in this small town with his gas station and his friend, a mute boy who's his assistant, and even falls in love with a very nice young lady. However, when one of the thugs who worked for Kirk Douglas's character catches up with him, he finds himself again entangled in a web of lies and mixed up with the same criminal characters, even the beautiful femme fatale who got him into trouble the first time. This movie definitely ticks all the boxes as a post-war crime film, or they called it a melodrama at the time in the marketing, correct? Yes, but being a post-war crime film, that really makes it stereotypical film noir. That's right. That era, would you say like the late 40s through the early 50s? What would you say is sort of the film noir era? Well, to really answer that, I think we need to look at the history of film noir. The myth that has originated was that after World War II, French film critics were able to see all the American movies that they hadn't been able to see during the Nazi regime, and they noticed the movies were darker, so they came up with the term film noir. That's not true, though, because the term was used as early as the 1930s, applied to French movies, and French film critics used it because it was taken from the term C'est Une Noix, which was a cheap pulp fiction magazine about detective stories. So it's like, oh, that's C'est Une Noix, these are film noir, and they were first applied to French movies from the, you know, 40s, even late 30s. What did they usually refer to this type of a film in the French industry? Yes, they often did. Something that was dark, and the first, one of the first film critics who used it about American movies or French movies was Nino Frank, and he said that it has to do with crime and debauchery and this descent into it. So that's what the origin of that term would be, yet the reason why I take issue with it, and some film critics as well, is that it was not used when they were making these films. Perhaps some artistic Frenchman might apply it to it, but... So it's not, like, historically accurate, really, to say, like, this is a genre that they were marketing at the time. RQ didn't say, okay, we need to make a film noir, call Robert Mitchum. They didn't think of it, this movie, in terms of a film noir. It wasn't something people were thinking. They called them melodramas, crime dramas, detective dramas, and people like to expand it so much. So that's where the origin is. The first time it really was applied to America was there was this book written in 1955 by two gentlemen. One was American, one was French, and they analyzed 22 films which they considered film noir from 1941 to 1953. I'm assuming this movie was on that list. I'm sure it was. And then the 55, which were sort of. But other people now say that they have identified hundreds that go, like, 300 from the 40s through the 50s. And... Sorry. And then just your average film-goer of them, who isn't that familiar with really great classic films, will just, basically, like we were saying earlier, if anything is dark, it's like, oh, this is a film noir. If it's kind of moody, it's kind of applied to sort of an atmosphere. If a film feels a certain way to you. A lot of people who write about film noirs have said that. It really was an expansion of German expressionism, which was a style of art, music, and even film which emerged in the early 20th century in Germany. And it inspired filmmakers in Europe and in America. Now, one clue I was thinking when I saw, OK, this was directed by a Frenchman, Jacques Tourneau. Was he perhaps involved in film noir? The answer is no, because he only made a handful of movies in France and they were all comedies. None of them were anything that could be applied to that. When he came to America, he started doing some horror movies, like something about cat people, I think the cat people in 1942. But then he got into doing pictures like this, crime detective dramas. And I think one of the reasons why it bothers me is because of its connection with the motion picture production code. Right. And stated in 1930, it's commonly called the Hays Code, which is not really correct. And it was not really enforced properly until 1934, which brought the end of what is called the pre-code era, 1930 to 1934, because then the PCA, or Production Code Administration, was formed and headed up by Joseph Breen. And he was in charge of it until 1954 when he retired. And in 1955, you can immediately see the switch, although technically the code was in place until 1968 and it was replaced with the rating system. So what people love to say is, oh, film noir's got around the code and they showed a weakening of the PCA and, you know, the darkness and the changes that happened after World War II. I remember reading that in a book. Yeah, a lot of people have said that, and I think it's just not true. People who say that clearly haven't studied movies made earlier, like the late 30s. They weren't dark movies because, oh, they're dark. You know, when you were talking about German expressionism, it made me think about, and you were talking about some film critics used that term back in the 1930s in France, but there's a movie from 1937, You Only Live Once, which has a lot of German expressionism in it, and I was thinking about the way that movie looks and the way it was filmed. If you're going to be that loose with films, why not just limit them to a time period? That could be called a film noir. Many people call that and one other movie as prototypes of the film noir genre. Interesting. The first official... You're not the first person to notice. Yes, did you notice that? The first movie that's considered a film noir is called The Stranger Who Lived Upstairs. It's from 1940 and it has Peter Lorre in it. It was a B-picture and a flop, but people say it was the beginning. The first successful movie considered a film noir is The Maltese Falcon. Oh, okay. Because it has, you know, the private eye, the femme fatale, crime, etc. Right. And then after World War II, there was more popularity in these detective dramas. I would say a lot of Humphrey Bogart's movies, even particularly the ones with Lauren Bacall, are classified in that genre, wouldn't you say? Yes, and Humphrey Bogart was first choice for this role. That's right, I remember reading that. And I heard a couple of different stories. Either he turned it down or he wanted to do it, but he couldn't get out of his contract or he was busy. Yeah. For whatever reason, he didn't do it. They also asked John Garfield. And Dick Powell. He was in a lot of films considered film noir. Yeah, he was in a lot of detective movies. So Robert Mitchum was fourth choice. And another reason that people sort of struggle with the film noir genre, and I have to agree, is that you can say there are a set of characteristics it has to have, but very few movies have all of them or even enough of them. Yeah. This is one of the ones that has basically all of them, so that's why. If there is such a thing as film noir, this is definitely it. For instance, some of the main characteristics to find would be to be about a private investigator. Robert Mitchum plays a private eye in this movie. And you have to have the femme fatale, and she is one of the best. I know. Her father said I think she's one of the worst femme fatales in film history, and I think he's right. To be in an urban setting. It has many parts in the wilds of San Francisco. Sometimes even being on location footage. They went to both some areas in Mexico and some areas in California. It's quite a bit of shooting. Yes. A lot of people die. What is it? The body count is six in this movie? Lots of shooting. A bit of a ubiquitous moral code. There's a guy you're not sure. Is he good? Is he bad? Yes. The main character being kind of morally ambiguous, you often see. You're sort of rooting for him because he is the lead character, but also you can see why his past catches up to him and it doesn't turn out well for him. Like you mentioned, someone who maybe isn't a criminal himself, but he gets drawn into this criminal situation. I found it fascinating to do a little research. What were people saying about movies like this at the time? Right. People definitely used the term crime drama, melodrama when talking about it. One thing which I noticed when we watched it was how much smoking was in it. There's just all the smoking. We tend to look back and say, people smoked so much back then, but Bosley Crowther in his review said that Robert Mitchum was smoking so much he couldn't believe how much he was smoking in that movie. That's interesting. That goes to show that it's not just that we look back now at the time. It seems that a lot of that was just from his personal habits. He smoked a lot. One time he accidentally came on set with a cigarette and in the scene, Kirk Douglas offers him a cigarette and he just goes smoking because he already had one. He just ad-libbed that and stayed in the movie. That's so interesting. I noticed that. I was like, that's kind of an interesting moment, but that was just him, I guess. The character was usually in kind of stressful situations. Someone, some film historian mentioned that that movie probably more than any other utilizes smoking dramatically. Yes. With lighting. And those two men are blowing smoke at each other constantly. But there is something to using lighting for creating that smoky atmosphere. That's a good point. Yeah. And the drama of the lighting. I remember hearing Eddie Muller at the Turner Classic Movie Film Festival describe they would wet down the sidewalks in film noir for that look of the lights reflecting. I definitely noticed that in this movie. To really stop and think about it, okay, we have all these characteristics. It's in black and white. It's dramatic. It's about crime. There's smoking. They're wearing these clothes. Were they doing that for a particular effect or was that just the style of movies at the time? One of the most famous stereotypes would be the man in the trench coat and the fedora. And I noticed Robert Mitchum was wearing a trench coat and a fedora. And then you very intelligently pointed out that's how men dressed then. It wasn't just, we're making a film noir. Grab the trench coat. Yeah, when you really stop to think about it, that's just what they wore at the time. And we look back now. It's foggy. Well, yeah. We look back now and see those styles like, oh, that's true film noir. No, that's 1940. That's what they wore then. That's that post-war feeling. Yes, there was that feeling of restlessness after the war, perhaps. But to say there was no crime, there was no violence, there was nothing dark. I mean, gangster films, they made gangster films. You could say, I guess you say the film noir is the replacement to the gangster film. No, it's just a continuation of it. They shifted more from organized gangland to individual thugs because organized gangland had broken down a bit as they moved farther away from prohibition. And I think that fit more with the moral code in Hollywood at that point. Yes. To have the character getting drawn into life of crime, it's kind of, it's an easier story to present preserving the morals. Yeah. And the standards of good and evil than the ones that's all focused around gangster. Not that they didn't still make them. There were some excellent ones from the code era, like The Roaring Twenties from 1939. Angels with Dirty Faces. Yeah, plenty of good examples of code gangster films. I think it's interesting a lot of times when you read about, say on IMDb, the trivia, they'll refer to the censors. But when I was reading about this one, it actually mentioned Joseph Breen by name in the PCA and how initially they objected to, or he specifically objected to the book because her character is presented as very plainly living with both wit and Jeff. That's right. So they made it more ambiguous in the film. Yeah, they don't say that they aren't, but they also don't say that they are. And that's the beauty of the code. That's right. It's just kind of left up to the audience to make a decision. So it challenges you as a viewer, which modern films don't really challenge you very much as a viewer because they just tell you everything. The movie was based on the book Build My Gallows High, and he actually says that as a quote near the end of the movie. But that was the title they used in England. That doesn't surprise me. It has kind of a British sound. British often like to have a more poetic title, I would say. Now, isn't it true the title, the American title, Out of the Past is actually from the lyrics of the song? Yes, the song that is played sort of as their song throughout and it's woven into the theme song is You Keep Coming Back Like a Song, highlighting the idea of someone appearing. And one of the last lyrics is out of the past. That's really interesting. Because it's not just that his past comes to catch up with him. It's also that this woman who led him down the wrong path comes out of the past. Yes. Like you mentioned, the idea of organized crime versus independent and someone being drawn in, the idea that the code was somehow weakened by allowing the film noir genre. But it doesn't look very glamorous in a lot of times. It looks dark. It looks bad. It looks gritty. And people say, well, that's proof that the code is being broken down. Not realizing that that's what the code is all about. You can show wrongdoing. You can show evil. As long as it looks wrong. Within the confines of good taste, of course. And they say, oh, and the brutality against women. Women get slapped in plenty of 1930s movies. And when Jane Greer, her character, gets slapped by Kirk Douglas' character, I don't think anyone really feels sorry for her. I mean, she's shot a couple of people by that point. She kind of deserves it. It's still a little startling. It's jarring, but it's a bad character doing it to a bad character. Right. So it's not seen as anything that's a good behavior. We see that as bad behavior. That's a very good point. The difference is you wouldn't usually see your very sympathetic leading man beating up his leading lady. That's something you would see more in pre-code. In James Cagney Taxi, where he's not playing a gangster. He's just a taxi driver. He's a pretty average fellow. And he's, like, in an affectionate way. He's very aggressive toward his leading lady, who he marries his wife. And it's just, you're not surprised when later on he gets angry and then he slaps her because he felt it coming. So just kind of casually being aggressive in a relationship like that, you won't see that in code film. Because that's not a nice reflection of married life. But like you said, these are both bad characters. And the thing that drives home the moral message the most strongly would be Robert Mitchum's character by the end of the movie is wanted for two murders. But he didn't commit either of them. As a matter of fact, has he actually committed any crime you could establish in a courtroom, would you say? No, I don't think he has. He's been sort of involved with this criminal life, but pretty much his hands are pretty clean. However, in spite of that, spoiler alert, he dies at the end. So it's very strongly sending the message that crime doesn't pay. Just getting involved in this life. And also be careful with whom you associate. You're known by the company you keep. This woman, first and foremost, eventually leads to his death. Because you could say he had a job to do, he was supposed to bring her back to Kirk Douglas, and he didn't do it. He chose her for himself instead. Even if they did have an innocent relationship, we're not 100% sure one way or the other. But she tempted him, he allowed himself to be tempted, and that led to his death. Yeah. And hers too. Color is used very dramatically in movies, many times. And I think the PCA inspired this. She starts out wearing white, because she seems like an innocent young woman. After she commits her first murder, she starts wearing darker colors, and by the end she's all in black. I understand that was something that the director also was very integral. Yes. And it's really interesting to think a black and white movie, but they're still using color to tell the story. There's a lot of shading. Mm-hmm. Something that's not always appreciated when studying, or not studying, but people who don't know about black and white. So the director's like, it's black and white, but there are a lot of shades within black and white. And of course, if you've watched it enough, you can learn to recognize colors. My outfit is inspired by the fashion of the bad girl, Jane Greer's character. And the style of this dress is most like her first costume, which is technically a white sundress, but to really embody the femme fatale, I went with darker color tones. She's also wearing a large sun hat, black pumps, and notably in their meeting scene, Robert Mitchum buys a very large pair of earrings for her. My outfit is modeled on Anne, played by Virginia Houston, the nice girl whom Jeff grows to love as he's trying to reform. I'm copying my outfit on her final outfit, which has a pencil skirt in a medium gray shade, which could be gray like this, and a blouse that's really more like a coat because it seems to be rather cold out, with simple black shoes, a little black hat, and most notably, she has an envelope bag purse with a black and white scarf attached to it. I think it's interesting to consider what is it that draws people to the idea of film noir so much, and particularly to this film, because it has been called the ultimate film noir. That's part of the reason why we chose it. I think that people are attracted to the mystery, crime. We all know people like crime and negativity and death and drama, but it is a melodrama. People love melodramas. Yes. And similar to why they like soap operas. There's a lot of conflict, intrigue, and the idea that kind of an average person gets mixed up in all this drama. Deep down, we're all looking for some mystery, so it's exciting. There are prominent male and female characters usually in most. And I think this film, as you were saying, it ticks all the boxes. I think that's why. First, it's like it really fits all these things that you're supposed to have to categorize something as a film noir. And as a result, it's one of those things that is almost stereotypical but also manages to be really unusual in a way because it really has everything that you want in this type of a crime drama, melodrama, whatever you want to call it. It really just has all the elements. And with the German expressionism, the style of it is really beautiful. It's shot really nicely. Yes. The dialogue is very well-crafted. Yes, it is. I really admire well-crafted dialogue. And the rapport between all the characters is very real. Yes, it's impressive. And it's really intriguing and it draws you in. Lots of switches in the latter part. So much that Bosley Crowther, famous reviewer, basically concluded it looked good but I have no idea what was happening in the latter part of the movie. They lost me. Interesting. I can't agree with that. I found it easy to follow. People always talk about how confusing this movie is but I found it to make sense. I mean, there were quite a few switches. I didn't find it confusing at all. It was easier to follow than a lot of Hitchcock movies. Yes, and I think Robert Mitchum later joked when people asked, why was it so confusing? He said, oh, we lost about four pages of the script. His sense of humor. But if you pay attention, I think that you can definitely enjoy the drama of it. I find it to be something that people who even aren't familiar with old movies could enjoy. Because like you said, it's what you want to see if you're thinking about a 1940s crime melodrama. And something that just to me personally was very interesting is the very small character of the kid who's his deaf-mute assistant at the gas station. He's only in it for about five minutes, I think. But when I first heard about the movie, our father actually watched it first and he told me about it. He mentioned there was this character. I find that really interesting. The idea of having a mute character. You don't see that that often. But it's always an intriguing kind of plot device. And he was played by former child actor Dickey Moore who is now a very handsome young man. And it's interesting to see what a good job he does creating that character. If you're not familiar with him, you wonder at first, is this his boy actually deaf-mute? Which, of course, he wasn't. But he embodies that very well. And he actually gets the last moment of the film. Sort of a moment as... There's always a silver lining somewhere. Even though all the villains are dead and even Robert Mitchum, who wasn't that bad, and the good girl is left. But she's haunted by the memory of him and the kid has an opportunity to let her move past that and to go to the nice guy who likes her. Because he sort of tells a lie that makes her able to accept that he really was wanting the bad girl. Which isn't true, because that's what he wanted. He knew he was going to ruin her life. And he didn't want to do that. So he'd rather that she think he was bad even if he really wasn't. Right, he actually was being quite self-sacrificing in his last moments. So even though he dies, his character is somewhat redeemed. And that's why we see the code element. Which I think separates it from the descent into debauchery and crime of the French film noir. It is an American film. It does have a good message. And, thankfully, movies like this are really easy to find. We watched it for free on Tubi. And you can also rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video or many other places like that. YouTube, Google Play. Pretty much any streaming platform, any place you watch movies. You'll be able to find it either for free or a small amount to rent or purchase it. And it's definitely worth watching. I think you'll find it an intriguing movie. Even if you're not really into the crime genre, I think you could enjoy this. If you just like that 1940s style and you want to see a great example of it out of the past. Next week, we'll be lightening things up significantly as we talk about something for the fans of classical music in our audience. You'd really like to see a film that pays tribute to great classical music and particularly opera. Join us next week. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.