Out of the Past
1947
****
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Steve Brodie, Virginia Huston, Paul Valentine, Dickie Moore, Ken Niles, Theresa Harris
A former private detective once fell in love with an alluring woman he was hired to track down. Now he is pulled back into a world of lies and deception, when she returns to his life. Jacques Tourneur's grim drama is a quintessential film noir, with suitably moody cinematography and snappy dialogue. Robert Mitchum is great as the man whose past comes back to haunt him and Jane Greer is his equal as one of the craftiest femme fatales in the genre. Based on Daniel Mainwaring's 1946 novel Build My Gallows High.
