#Out Of The Past Is Film Noir At Its Finest

Film noir, for anyone who’s unaware, is arguably one of the hardest genres to pin down despite having one of the most iconic aesthetics in all of cinema. The immediate images that come to mind when we think of noir are jazz scores, smokey bars, dangerous dames, a PI who has to keep one eye open at all times, and a double-cross waiting in the wings. But the funny thing is that these stereotypes only make up a portion of the genre. Most of the scores for noirs actually consist of elaborate string compositions, not jazz. It seldom centers around a private investigator, but the iconic Philip Marlowe immortalized by Humphrey Bogart really made that notion stick.

So what’s my point, you may be asking? Merely that noir ain’t what it seems to be on its face, but it always delivers the goods.

Enter not only one of the greatest film noirs but probably one of the 100 greatest films of all time — “Out of the Past.”

Jacques Tourneur’s 1947 classic truly embodies all of the most recognizable and beloved elements of film noir. Chief among them is actually something that often gets overlooked — flashbacks and voiceovers.

The first few minutes of the film introduce us to our protagonist, the aforementioned Jeff “Bailey” Markham, hiding out in Bridgeport, laying low. Then, once his past catches up to him — as it always does — he takes us on a journey back in time. On a long drive to the house of his former employer, Whit Sterling (played by Kirk Douglas), Jeff tells his beloved Ann Miller (Virginia Huston) all about his sordid history.