"I sell gasoline. I make a small profit. With that I buy groceries. The grocer makes a profit. We call it earning a living. You may have heard of it somewhere."
Jeff (Robert Mitchum)
One of my favorite Paul Simon songs never made much of a ripple on the radio but rode "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" to the top of the charts as its B side — "Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy."
"Out of the Past," which debuted on this day in 1947, always makes me think of that song.
Because, as the song says, some folks' lives do roll easy, and "some folks' lives never roll at all." Some people follow straight trajectories onward and upward to the top (or, at least, in that general direction); most of us, I guess, have something in our pasts from which we're trying to escape.
In director Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past," Robert Mitchum was trying to break free from his past as a private investigator. But, like Al Pacino in "The Godfather Part III," he kept being pulled back in.
The story line doesn't exactly roll easy, either, but that is what might just make "Out of the Past" one of the best film noirs of all time — maybe even the best. Don't sit back to watch this with a beer in your hand, though. You'll need all your wits about you to keep up with the twists and turns in this one.
You'll find it is worth it.
There is an intriguing dynamic between Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, who were distinctly different in their styles. In a typical film noir way, the movie reeks with symbolism from the (literally) dark scenes to the clear cinematic triangle of good–guy Mitchum, bad–guy Douglas and femme fatale Jane Greer.
Douglas was a gangster, and Greer was his mistress. Douglas alleged Greer had shot him and stolen money from him; Mitchum, as a private investigator, had been hired to track her down.
After he found Greer, Mitchum became infatuated with her and ultimately confessed that he had been hired to find her. This did not come as a surprise to Greer; in fact, she had suspected as much and had been preparing her story all along.
And what a story it was. She denied stealing Douglas' money and urged Mitchum to run away with her. But Mitchum discovered that she was a liar and a killer.
Then the story got complicated ...
It is probably important to note that much of the story was told through flashbacks. After Mitchum and Greer eventually split up and Mitchum tried to start over again as a gas station operator, part of his new life involved a new girlfriend. This one, played by Virginia Huston, was much nicer, a real girl next door, and it was to her that Mitchum told the story as they were driving to meet with Douglas.
"She can't be all bad," Huston said at one point. "No one is."
"She comes closest," Mitchum replied.
His character was right about that. Greer had the qualities of a great femme fatale — on the screen as in life, a true femme fatale has no remorse for anything she does. She is completely self–centered, and she is beautiful and seductive enough that any man, even ones as smart and as tough as the ones with whom she was involved in "Out of the Past," could fall for her.
Although uncredited in many of his early films, Mitchum was known largely as a film noir actor at first. In hindsight, he seems like a natural choice for the role in "Out of the Past," but he was the fourth choice to play the part. Humphrey Bogart was the first choice, and by all accounts I have read he wanted to play it, but Bogart was under contract to Warner Brothers and RKO Pictures owned the rights to "Out of the Past."
John Garfield and Dick Powell turned down the role, and it went to Mitchum.
