Out of the Past (1947)

If ever a movie made me want to smoke and drink scotch on the rocks, it was Out of the Past. Everything about this movie works from the laconic performance of Robert Mitchum as a private detective to Kirk Douglas’ mobster who hires him to find the luminous Jane Greer. Rhonda Fleming does herself proud as a woman who’s ‘a little cold around the heart’. The dialogue crackles, the action excites, and the plot takes more than a few twists before arriving at its inevitable conclusion. If you’re in the mood for noir, you can’t do better than this.