Out of the Past

Jacques Tourneur's 1947 noir masterpiece stars Robert Mitchum as Jeff Bailey, a small-town gas station owner whose quiet life shatters when a former associate tracks him down. Mitchum's Jeff is a man with a past, he used to be a private detective named Jeff Markham, and that past comes roaring back in the form of Whit Sterling, a gangster played with oily menace by Kirk Douglas. Sterling wants Jeff to find his mistress Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), who shot him and stole $40,000. But when Jeff tracks Kathie to Acapulco, he falls for her, setting off a chain of double crosses and betrayals. The film also features Virginia Huston as Ann, Jeff's new love interest, and Rhonda Fleming as the duplicitous Meta Carson. Shot by cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca in deep, shadowy blacks, the film is a textbook example of film noir. Made on a modest budget by RKO, it received strong reviews and has since been hailed as one of the genre's finest. Its enduring influence can be seen in countless neo-noirs.[edit]

Jeff Bailey runs a gas station in the sleepy town of Bridgeport, California. He's building a quiet life with Ann Miller, a local schoolteacher who knows nothing about his past. One day, a flashy stranger named Joe Stephanos rolls into town and demands Jeff come meet his boss, the powerful gangster Whit Sterling. Ann insists on driving Jeff to Whit's lakeside estate, and on the way he tells her the truth.

Jeff was once Jeff Markham, a top New York private detective. Whit hired him to find his mistress Kathie Moffat, who shot Whit and ran off with $40,000. Jeff tracked her to Acapulco, but instead of bringing her back, he fell in love. They lived together in a string of hideouts, always one step ahead of Whit's men. In San Francisco, they tried to sell stolen tax documents through a crooked lawyer. The deal went bad, Jeff's partner Jack Fisher was murdered, and Jeff assumed Kathie had returned to Whit. He disappeared and started over as a gas station owner.

Back in the present, Jeff meets Whit at his estate. Whit acts forgiving and offers Jeff a simple job: retrieve some incriminating tax documents from his accountant Leonard Eels in San Francisco. Jeff is suspicious but takes the job, with Stephanos tagging along. In San Francisco, Jeff meets Meta Carson, Whit's seductive secretary, and soon realizes the job is a setup to frame him for murder. Kathie is back with Whit, and Jeff is trapped between his desire for a normal life with Ann and the pull of his criminal past. Every attempt to escape only drags him deeper into a noir nightmare of double crosses and shifting loyalties.[edit]