From the shadows of the past stumble the memories of your misdeeds — they lug themselves towards you in heavy coats and hats — packing heat and chewing on cocktail sticks.  Whatever you do, wherever you go, fate can catch you — fate WILL catch you.  That’s the message of Out of the Past (1947) director: Jacques Tourneur, and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas.  Out of the Past is one of the most heavy duty, hard wearing, cigarette smoking film noirs out there — hoods, hats, hold ups and past actions dredging up the most awful barrelfuls of darkness.  The debasing cult of noir has rarely seen such a troublesome bunch as this flick throws up, so much so that resolution seems impossible. Crime don’t pay, bub — it only costs.

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Here is the noir checklist in brief, as applied to Out of the Past

• A heel in the form of a weak male lead - NO
• A strong female lead - YES
• Lighting - YES
• Psychology - YES
• Fate plays its hand - YES

The convulted plot was pretty much invented by the creators of film noir in the 1940s.  We should always remember that none of the writers, producers or directors involved were consciously making noir — the term was first used in 1946 in France and was applied rather retrospectively on the genre.  

Emotionally shaded, Out of the Past is one of the few noirs that bears re-watching, merely because you want to try and grasp it, and even though there is so much going on, it never feels overworked.  Jacques Tourneur took film noir damn near to the cliff-edge of tragic poetry in Out Of The Past, and raised the standards of the noir cycle as high as they would ever be, without technical innovation, but instead with a melnacholy and an emphasis on what the cruel world of crime is doing to the frail human personalities it sucks up.  This is neatly expressed in a casino when Jane Greer asks, "Is there a way to win?" and Robert Mitchum answers, "There's a way to lose more slowly."

There are of course plenty typically characterful and often unpleasant noir-style lines of dialogue, such as:

‘You know a dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle.’

 

‘I sell gasoline, I make a small profit. With that I buy groceries. The grocer makes a profit. We call it earning a living. You may have heard of it somewhere.’

 

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.

 

I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn't know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don't know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end.

 

That final quote, delivered by  Mitchum, is a full on existential expression of noir, including fate, cigarettes, the hopelessness of love, and the awful confusions pertinent to being alone in a cruel universe.

Here is a great quote about Out of the Past from Roger Ebert, a quote from his article '200 Cigarettes'.

The trick, as demonstrated by Jacques Tourneur and his cameraman, Nicholas Musuraca, is to throw a lot of light into the empty space where the characters are going to exhale. When they do, they produce great white clouds of smoke, which express their moods, their personalities and their energy levels. There were guns in Out of the Past, but the real hostility came when Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoked at each other.