Out of the Past

Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur is one of my all time high movies, which are inspiring my artwork.

The coolness of Robert Mitchum: Celluloid dipped sensebility on the way to his own hell. In 1948, he, along with actress Lila Leeds, was arrested for possession of marijuana. The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers, as well, but Mitchum and Leeds didn’t receive the tip-off. Mitchum spent 60 days in the local lock-up, with Life magazine right there snapping photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform. The arrest became the inspiration for the later film ‘She Shoulda Said ‘No’!’, which starred Leeds.

The quintessential classic film noir masterpiece, a definitive flashback film of melodramatic doom, contains all the elements of the genre. First and foremost, there is an irresistible but deadly, chameleon-like femme fatale, the object of romantic fascination for both a detective and a gangster. Betrayal, passion, and a cynical, perverse, and a morally ambiguous atmosphere are all interwoven and entangled together in a confusing and convoluted dark plot with both double- and triple-crosses. Eventually, all three individuals meet their inescapable, tragic ends typical of a Shakespearean-level tragedy.