Out of the Past

I’m pretty sure that by the end of my life I will be a hard-boiled expert on noir. I can’t get enough of it. I love discovering it. I love pouring over it. I love being immersed in these films. With as many as I’ve already seen, I can identify some of the best pretty quickly. It is without a doubt that I would make anyone wanting to discover American film noir watch The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and Out of the Past.

Now I’ve blogged about Out of the Past before, I believe I raved about it. Thank God my second viewing confirms what I thought the first time, Out of the Past is a prime example of the visceral and emotional story telling that can make noir such a powerful genre.

Watching Out of the Past is a riveting experience, partly because the dialogue in that film downright crackles. These are smart, dangerous, witty, sassy characters that won’t be duped and have been handled with finesse by an equally smart writer. Lines like “You can never help anything, can you? You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another” are thrown around with ease and make me wish that I could talk like that and have my peers actually follow the conversation.

This film is a cinematic marvel. I can’t believe I didn’t discover it until this year. I want to prevent others with a love of noir from suffering the same fate. So go. Rent it. Buy it. See it.

Kathie Moffat: Oh Jeff, you ought to have killed me for what I did a moment ago.
Jeff Bailey: There's time.

Scrooged

Scrooged
Originally uploaded by Uncinefilo

In this modern day interpretation of A Christmas Carol Frank Cross is the youngest television president in history and it has gone to his head. As he plans the worlds largest live broadcast on Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his old boss and warned he is being given a chance to change his ways and will be visited on Christmas Eve by three ghosts. Cross spends the next day being ferried through his past, present and future by ghosts and leading everyone in his life to start thinking the Christmas Eve broadcast has finally made him lose it.

Scrooged is hands down one of my favorite Christmas films, and a movie so funny that like Elf I can watch it any time of year. What makes this film so memorable is that it takes a story we all know so well and manages to combine that with what Bill Murray does best – bizarre comedy.

Frank Cross is a horrible man. He sends the people on his Christmas gift list either a towel or a VCR depending on if he likes them or not. He refuses to give his secretary a bonus. He fires an executive the day before Christmas Eve for disagreeing with him. He’s excited when an old woman has a heart attack from watching his Scrooged promo and it gets published by the media. Cross doesn’t care about anyone and everyone knows it. The slogan posted around his office is “Cross: a thing you nail people to”. Bill Murray is the perfect person to play Frank Cross because he can take all of the self-involved horribleness of Frank Cross and make them almost endearing. You still think Frank Cross is awful, but you laugh at him and get excited when he changes. And there is nothing like watching Murray do his thing on screen, he’s amazing.

You also have to love the ghosts in this film, the most memorable one for most people I talk to is the ghost of Christmas present played by Carol Kane. Kane is a SNL alum like Murray, and their comedy styles mesh very well, but that’s not what makes her character memorable. What makes Kane’s ghost memorable is that she is a hyper fairy in a tutu that beats the crud out of Frank. I don’t mean metaphorically, or emotionally, I mean that at one point she literally hits him with a toaster – and that’s just one thing she hits him with. Kane’s character and Cross spend most of their segment arguing like an old divorced couple and each argument culminates in violence to get Frank magically transported to the next scene he needs to see.

I know the holiday season is wrapping to a close and you may not feel like watching a Dicken’s tale during the march to Valentine’s Day, but I do hope that at some point before Christmas Day rolls around again you will find this film and watch it if you haven’t seen it before.

Director: Richard Donner
Writers: Mitch Glazer & Michael O’Donoghue
Frank Cross: Bill Murray
Claire Phillips: Karen Allen
Lew Hayward: John Forsythe
Brice Cummings: John Golver
Eliot Loudermilk: Bobcat Goldwait
Ghost of Christmas Past: David Johansen
Ghost of Christmas Present: Carol Kane
Preston Rhinelander: Robert Mitchum
Grace: Alfre Woodard
Scrooge: Buddy Hackett

Frank Cross: Do you think I'm way off-base here?
Elliot: Yes. You're, well, you're a tad off-base, sir. That thing looked like The Manson Family Christmas Special.

Out of the Past

Out of the Past (1947)
Originally uploaded by linfante

Out of the Past is one of the best film noir’s I have ever seen, one of the noir’s that definitely defined the genre.

Jeff Bailey is an owner of a gas station, or at least that’s what he would have you think. In classic noir style he is actually a former PI who is hiding out from an old boss, and a past that he doesn’t want to catch up with him which always means that it will catch up with him and when he really doesn’t want it to. Soon Jeff is dragged back into his past, when he was hired to find Whit Sterling’s missing girlfriend, but of course nothing is ever that simple and before too long Jeff is in too far over his head and he can’t see his way out of the trap.

What I love about Out of the Past is that it is noir all the way to its toes. The protagonist is deeply flawed, even fatally flawed. We have both representations of the noir woman – the angelic woman in the girl Jeff is in love with now, and the femme fatale in the woman Jeff was initially in love with, the one that he can’t stay away from but brings him nothing but misery. The big bad is all evil with no redemptive quality, and the world itself seems out to get Jeff. This is a world that is all gray. What I love about the core of film noir is in Out of the Past. This is a movie where all the characters must atone for their sins and they have no say in the matter

I have to say that I have seen far too few movies with Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum. Not only are these men a phenomenal pair in this film, but on their own each actor is incredibly powerful and very fun to watch.

The camera work and photography are absolutely classic and beautiful in this film. I was actually in awe of several of the shots and the camera work and lighting. This is a beautiful film and I think the entire film is a testament to the kinds of images that could be created in film noir.

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writer: Daniel Mainwaring
Jeff Bailey: Robert Mitchum
Kathie Moffat: Jane Greer
Whit Sterling: Kirk Douglas
Meta Carson: Rhonda Fleming

Kathie Moffat: Oh, Jeff, I don't want to die!
Jeff Bailey: Neither do I, baby, but if I have to I'm gonna die last.