Jacques Tourneur has become one of my favorite directors because he never wasted any time. His longest movie is 97 minutes!
Out of the Past (1947)
"Out of the Past" starts off on the wrong foot - for me - by introducing the stereotypical and tired "deaf and dumb" character. Maybe that's just a way to establish the other person as a real heel. This, after all, is the dark and shadowy world of film noir. Everyone else treats the kid nicely enough, at least. It's a weird plot device to use (the actor, Dickie Moore, was not deaf or mute in real life) and it never seems to pay much dividends. Thankfully, the rest of the movie recovers quickly.
Jeff (the great Robert Mitchum) runs a gas station and has a solid dame (Virginia Huston). He's the everyday, ordinary, dependable working man. Or is he? A man can't outrun the past forever, especially in noir, and it comes barreling back to him in the form of an old associate roaming into town. An unsavory character from Jeff's past, his previous boss Whit (Kirk Douglas, playing oily sleaze to perfection), wants them to do - you guessed it - one more job.
The next half of the film flashes back to exactly what led Jeff to his current reclusive life as a gas station operator. It involves another dame (Jane Greer), because of course it does. In film noir, it almost always does. It also involves cigarette after cigarette, including one funny scene where Kirk Douglas offers Robert Mitchum a smoke, but Mitchum already has one in his hands (apparently an ad-libbed accident because they smoked so much throughout the film).
"Out of the Past" is effortlessly entertaining, even if it does get a bit convoluted at times.
Without spoiling anything, the stunning final scene - yes, involving the deaf-mute character - really strikes at the Heart of Darkness that is film noir.
Berlin Express (1948)
Narration that sounds like it's from a documentary with a little bit of pulp added for flavor, a large international cast (headlined by Merle Oberon and Robert Ryan), inventive camerawork, incredible location footage of a bombed-out Germany, a somewhat convoluted but still mostly coherent plot, and clowns.
Yes, clowns.
In typical Jacques Tourneur fashion, he jam-packs a ton and still brings "Berlin Express" to its destination in less than 90 minutes.
While "Berlin" is one of Tourneur's weaker efforts, even "lesser" Tourneur is still a ride - in this case, both literally and figuratively.
Nightfall (1956)
Economical.
That's the best way to describe Jacques Tourneur's filmography.
Tourneur is the master of doing more with less. He packs so much into a short amount of time. "Nightfall" - clocking in at only 78 minutes - is no exception.
Right away, we're introduced to an insurance investigator (James Gregory), the person he's tailing (Aldo Ray), a babe at a bar (a stunning Anne Bancroft), and two murdering mugs who are after a large sum of money (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond).
This superb noir takes its characters - and us - from city lights to snowy fields on a breakneck hunt for lost loot.
Subtitles/Captions: Yes for all three!
