Special Features:

• Commentary by Author/Film-Noir Specialist James Ursini

GreenCine Says: Remade not too terribly as Against All Odds, there's still only one Out of the Past, one of the finest and most quotable film noir ever. Robert Mitchum, in full-on cigarette-and eyes-drooping mode, stars as a man trying to separate himself from his past life as a private eye, to start afresh with the girl next door (Virginia Huston) - only to get sucked back into it all again. Kirk Douglas is absolutely electrifying as the mobster who'd hired him to track down a dame (Jane Greer), who ends up playing them both like saps; she's "awfully cold around the heart." Jacques Tourneur's moody, almost gothic direction and the varied locations - Eastern Sierra spots, in and out of diners, gas stations, cabins, forests and gloomy Tahoe mansions, plus equally atmospheric forays to Mexico and the shadows of San Francisco - heighten the feeling of melancholy doom (the film was originally titled "Build My Gallows High," the title of the Daniel Manwaring novel it's based on, and a line uttered memorably by Mitchum). But it's the tart dialogue, by Manwaring and an uncredited Frank Fenton and James M. Cain, that leaves the most indelible impression. The script zings and the one-liners ricochet like wayward bullets. "You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another," Mitchum tells Greer at one point. "My feelings? About ten years ago, I hid them somewhere and haven't been able to find them," says the bitter Douglas. Out of the Past is truly quintessential noir, and will hit you like a slap in the face. And you'll like it. -- Tamara Lees