OUT OF THE PAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 464, 14 May 1948, Page 24

OUT OF THE PAST

(RKO-Radio) HAVE a friend whose trains. of thought (so far as her conversation reveals them) have an annoying habit of popping into tunnels, and then emerging in quite unexpected places. In consequence [ am always losing the train, and occasionally lose my patience along with it. Out of the Past reminded me, in places, of her. The dialogue at times requires some effort on the part of the non-American filmgoer if one is to penetrate to the thought behind it, and the Past out of which the story comes, though filled in to some extent by flashback, makes a rather untidy junction with the present. Once or twice I got confused between two of the female characters, and looking back I am not now sure who-all killed whom, and why, but in spite of this moiety of confusion Out of the Past manages to rise noticeably above average.

The central character is a young priwate detective (Robert Mitchum) who, having been retained by a suave racketeer to track down his absconding girlfriend (Jane Greer), finds the girl and promptly absconds with her himself. As might be imagined there is a good deal of sudden death (including the first instance, in my experience, of murder by fishing-rod). In fact, the story is just one sticky situation after "another, but the pattern is refreshingly out of the ordinary, there is enough excitement to satisfy the jaded, the acting is fairly good, and (td me, most acceptable of ell) there is no fatuous happy ending. The young sleuth, because he attempts to climb back on to the straight and narrow path, is finally shot by the girl, a proper tigress if ever there was one, and she is thereupon shot up most effectively by the police-altogether a much more realistic ending than this class of picture customarily provides. : With his GJ. Joe stubble shaved off, Mitchum may suggest a muscular edition of Crosby to some filmgoers, while those who are familiar with the novels of Mr. Peter Cheyney will feel, I am sure, that he approximates most closely to the tough but amorous investigators of the F.B.I. But whatever, or whoever, he looks like, he is quite worth watching. There’s no, strain involved in watching Miss Greer.