Reception
Out of the Past is considered one of the greatest of all films noir. Robert Ottoson hailed the film in 1981 as "the ne plus ultra of forties film noir". In a contemporary review, The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther complimented the crime drama's direction and performances, although he did find the latter portion of the screenplay hard to follow:
...it's very snappy and quite intriguingly played by a cast that has been well and smartly directed by Jacques Tourneur. Robert Mitchum is magnificently cheeky and self-assured as the tangled 'private eye,' consuming an astronomical number of cigarettes in displaying his nonchalance. And Jane Greer is very sleek as his Delilah, Kirk Douglas is crisp as a big crook and Richard Webb, Virginia Huston, Rhonda Fleming and Dickie Moore are picturesque in other roles. If only we had some way of knowing what's going on in the last half of this film, we might get more pleasure from it. As it is, the challenge is worth a try.
The staff of the widely read trade publication Variety also gave it a positive review upon release:
Out of the Past is a hardboiled melodrama [from the novel by Geoffrey Homes] strong on characterization. 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...Mitchum gives a very strong account of himself. Jane Greer as the baby-faced, charming killer is another lending potent interest. Kirk Douglas, the gangster, is believable and Paul Valentine makes his role of henchman stand out. Rhonda Fleming is in briefly but effectively."
In The Nation in 1948, James Agee wrote, "Out of the Past is a medium-grade thriller ... Fairly well played, and very well photographed ... the action develops a routine kind of pseudo-tension ... Robert Mitchum is so very sleepily self-confident with the women that when he slopes into clinches you expect him to snore in their faces."
In his 2004 assessment of the film for the Chicago Sun-Times, critic Roger Ebert noted:
Out of the Past is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The film stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.
With regard to the production's stylish and moody cinematography, Ebert also dubbed the film "The greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time."
...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.
In a 1989 review, Leslie Halliwell gave it two of four stars, stating: "Moody film noir with Hollywood imitating French models; plenty of snarling and a death-strewn climax."
Pauline Kael wrote in 1991, "A thin but well-shot suspense melodrama ... It's empty trash, but you do keep watching it." TCM Noir Alley host and author Eddie Muller lauded the film in 2021: "Mainwaring's serpentine story is all about mood and movement, dreamily winding its way through various locations, shifting rhythms, seducing the audience toward the black hole at its heart. It nailed the bull's-eye and its reverberations linger after repeated viewings: guilt, duplicity, self-deception, and the lonely hero's need to push it to the bitter end, tempting fate once too often."
The film holds a score of 87% on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 82 reviews. Its consensus summarizes: "Anchored by a wistful Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past is an exemplary noir steeped in doom and sensuality." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
