Out of the Past Reviews

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Top Critic
Philip K. Scheuer
Los Angeles Times
June 28, 2019
The players acquit themselves histrionically if not morally. Mitchum, [Kirk] Douglas and the Misses [Jane] Greer and [Rhonda] Fleming are all commendable.
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Virginia Graham
The Spectator
June 20, 2018
As an antidote to post-prandial lethargy it will do yeoman service...
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Top Critic
James Agee
TIME Magazine
January 25, 2018
Fairly well played, and very well photographed (by Nicholas Musuraca), the action develops a routine kind of pseudo-tension.
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Tim Brayton
Antagony & Ecstasy
April 7, 2015
Essential viewing for the noir fan and the kind of movie that could make a neutral third party into a noir fan in the first place.
Full Review | Original Score: 9/10
Sean Axmaker
Parallax View
March 14, 2015
In a genre full of desperate characters scrambling and plotting to grab their slice of the American dream, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947) is a hard-boiled tale of betrayal with an unusually haunting quality.
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Keith Phipps
The Dissolve
September 17, 2014
Out Of The Past is undeniably a film noir, and rightly regarded as one of the genre's best.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
September 4, 2014
'Maybe we thought the world would end,' Mitchum muses, during a short-lived spell of happiness in Mexico. 'Maybe we thought it was a dream.' A dream? In his trench coat and fedora, he's clearly not a man destined to die quietly in his bed.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4
Top Critic
Richard Brody
New Yorker
April 7, 2014
Each change of angle and shift of light evokes an inner disturbance; the actors seem to push through the dense shadow as through water, revealing fast people in slow motion ...
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Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
February 11, 2012
[VIDEO ESSAY] One of the best-loved '40s era contributions to the film noir genre, Director Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past" (1947) is a definitive model.
Full Review | Original Score: A+
Wesley Lovell
Cinema Sight
August 16, 2011
Few films noir were better than this.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
July 9, 2011
Jacques Tourneuer's most accomplished film and a great sampler of film noir, sort of a textbook both visually and thematically.
Full Review | Original Score: A-
Gabe Leibowitz
Film and Felt
May 2, 2010
Out of the Past should be considered a prototypical example of how to do noir the right way--shadowy corners, double crossings aplenty, a luscious femme fatale, and, of course, murders.
Full Review | Original Score: 88/100
Robert Roten
Laramie Movie Scope
September 19, 2008
What makes "Out of the Past" stand out among the film noir classics is that it has better actors, a better screenplay and it doesn't look like it was made on the cheap.
Full Review | Original Score: A
Michael E. Grost
Classic Film and Television
August 9, 2007
Beautiful thriller, with haunting direction.
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Top Critic
Variety Staff
Variety
April 18, 2007
Direction by Jacques Tourneur pays close attention to mood development, achieving realistic flavor that is further emphasized by real life settings and topnotch lensing by Nicholas Musuraca.
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Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader
April 18, 2007
The most delicate and nuanced of film noirs, graced with a reflective lyricism that almost lifts it out of the genre.
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Jake Euker
F5 (Wichita, KS)
February 18, 2007
Original Score: 5/5
Jeffrey Westhoff
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
April 4, 2006
Original Score: 4/5
Thomas Delapa
Boulder Weekly
March 3, 2006
An irresistible blend of postwar fatalism, hard-boiled dialogue, dangerous sex and luscious black-and-whites ... the slouching, sleepy-eyed Mitchum is arguably the consummate noir hero.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4
Top Critic
Don Macpherson
Time Out
January 26, 2006
All these B movie poets were under contract to RKO in the winter of 1946, and produced the best movie of everyone involved -- once seen, never forgotten.
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