Film director Jacques Tourneur
French film director Jacques Tourneur is probably best known for having directed the 1947 film Out Of The Past starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, perhaps one of the greatest examples of film noir ever made.
In a 2004 review of the film, critic Roger Ebert wrote "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." Ebert also called it, "The greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time."
But Tourneur was also a very fine director of low budget horror films including Night Of The Demon, Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and The Leopard Man. Although they were pretty low budget films, there was nothing laughable or campy about them; all displayed solid acting and production values. Tourneur’s use of shadow and light was very effective in creating a creepy atmosphere, skills he would put to use in more important hard-hitting films such as Out Of The Past and the 1948 thriller Berlin Express with Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon. It’s the atmospheric quality of earlier horror films such as Tourneur’s I appreciate a great deal and that I sometimes miss in more modern horror films. Sometimes, what you don't openly show but what you only hint at which lies in smoke and shadow is the scariest of all.
Night Of The Demon (1957) – the forest chase scene
Cat People (1942) – swimming pool scene
I Walked With A Zombie (1943) – journey to the isle of the dead
The Leopard Man (1943) – the frightened young girl
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