Out of the Past

The definitive flashback movie, in which our fated hero Mitchum makes a rendezvous with death and his own past in the shape of Jane Greer. Beguiling and resolutely ominous, this hallucinatory voyage has two more distinctions: as the only movie with both a deaf-mute garage hand and death by fishing-rod, and as one of the most bewildering and beautiful films ever made. From a traditionally doomed and perversely corrupt world, the mood of obsession was never more powerfully suggestive: Mitchum waiting for Greer in a Mexican bar beneath a flashing neon sign sums it up - nothing happens, but everything is said. Superbly crafted pulp is revealed at every level: in the intricate script by Daniel Mainwaring (Phenix City Story, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), the almost abstract lighting patterns of Nick Musuraca (previously perfected in Cat People and The Spiral Staircase), and the downbeat, tragic otherworldliness of Jacques Tourneur (only equalled in his I Walked with a Zombie). All these B movie poets were under contract to RKO in the winter of 1946, and produced the best movie of everyone involved - once seen, never forgotten. (The source novel was by Mainwaring writing as Geoffrey Homes.)