There's Something Bigger Than Kirk...

You remember the opening of The Killers?

Burt Lancaster (in his film debut) has been working in a little out-of-the-way filling station, hiding out from a gang of mobsters who want to find him. 

One day, the wrong car pulls up at the petrol pump.

For Burt Lancaster, that was the end of the story. He knows that he has been found, and he makes a decision to stop running. When the killers inevitably arrive, they find him lying in bed, ready to accept his fate.

But not every noir protagonist takes such things lying down. Our next film opens exactly the same way, with a sleepy little town and a filling station attendant with a past. And sure enough, the wrong car pulls in and that filling station attendant realises that his past has caught up with him.

But this isn't Burt Lancaster. This is Robert Mitchum. And he's not ready to lie down and die just yet.

Last week's film (Born to Kill) was directed by Robert Wise, the young (at the time) editor-turned-director whose whose first directorial effort had been Curse of the Cat People; one of the films produced by the legendary Val Lewton and his RKO horror movie department.

Curse of the Cat People had of course been a sequel to Cat People, now regarded as one of the best horror films ever released. That film had been directed (with a great deal of style) by the French director Jacques Tourneur, who went on to direct this week's film. Everything connects.

Out of the Past is remembered today as one of the finest examples of the noir era, and also for its pairing of Robert Mitchum with Kirk Douglas. But back in 1947, almost no one would have heard of Kirk Douglas. He had made his film debut barely a year earlier, and had only appeared in two other films before this one. But he was rapidly establishing himself as one of Hollywood's formidable players, and he manages to dominate every scene he is in - even against the professionally laconic Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum, for his part, was well established by this point, and seems to float through the story on a cloud of cigarette smoke. Even the New York Times reviewer was moved to comment on the amount of smoking Mitchum does in this film, and for a 1947 reviewer to notice it, you know it has to be an astonishing number of cigarettes.

But Out of the Past is ultimately about the Femme Fatale, and Jane Greer proves herself to be one of the scariest in all of noir-dom. It's only gradually that you realise just how scary she actually is, but you will undoubtedly find that out for yourself soon enough.

Some critics (including Bosley Crowther in his above-mentioned review) have found the plot to be excessively complicated, and it does cover a lot of territory (both narratively and geographically) but this is not Raymond Chandler. There are no forgotten sub-plots or abandoned characters; there are just many double and triple crossings, and a never-ending parade of fresh plot twists (enough to make the casual movie-goer regret any brief excursions to the popcorn counter during the second half of the film).

And then there's the cinematography.

Jacques Tourneur is here reunited with Nicholas Musuraca, his director of photography from Cat People, and together they create a noir landscape that is almost tangible in its sense of quiet menace.

Unlike many other noirs, this one does not restrict itself to the urban jungle, but even the majestic vistas become the stuff of murky nightmares as the story progresses.

You'll see what I mean when we screen the film itself.

We will screen Out of the Past at 7.30 on Thursday, the 6th of March at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.