The Past is Inescapable

Out of the Past is the perfect title for this film. The film protrays how Jeff Bailey gets caught up in the past, as his old partner Joe Stefanos, tracks him down at his new gas station business along with his mute assistant, Jimmy. Bailey, previously known as Jeff Markam, was hired by Whit Sterling to find Whit’s mistress whom had shot and stolen $40,000 from him. Bailey fills in his own mistress at the time, Ann, about the previous events that had occurred when he went in search of Whit’s mistress, Kathie Moffett, on the drive to Whit’s mansion in Sterling Lake.
When all is said and done, and nobody is left but Kathie and Jeff, Kathie convinces Jeff to run away with her once again. Jeff decides to inform the police and both are killed as Kathie attempts to drive through a roadblock that the police had put up. Mistress Ann attends the funeral as well as Jimmy. Jimmy makes it seem as though Jeff truly and honestly wanted to run away with Kathie because he loved her. He does this for Ann’s sake so that she can forget Jeff and their past to continue forward in her life. I think because of this, Jimmy can be thought of as a hero in the film.
This film takes the city to be a place of drama, deceit, and violence and the country as what seems to be the escape route. The country is the place where Jeff thinks he can start over and avoid any kind of run in with his past which inevitably, in film noir, is never the case. Kathie, Jeff’s past, is at first the hero in the story. She takes Jeff out of his ordinary life and makes it seem almost worthwhile. Eventually she is the destruction of it all as she bounces between Jeff, the other hero, and Whit. Jeff’s flashbacks are the presence of the fall of his character until his fate, death.
Out of the Past is comparable to The Killers in the sense that in the first ten minutes of The Killers the audience is informed of the idea that you cannot escape your past. The same holds true for Out of the Past. Jeff Bailey’s life is told through a flashback, where in the end, he finds himself dead all due to his past that cannot be escaped.
Ann plays the role of the damsel while Kathie is the obvious femme fatale taking Jeff down the road of destruction. Out of the Past is a classic example of film noir as it fits the general profile. The situation is realistic as to the characters, setting, and atmosphere. The suspense and the confusion all boil down to a simplistic, inevitable explanation at the end, in the form of a denouement. The main factor that makes this film a noir is the idea that the criminal was punished in the end.
The visual aspects of film noir are to set a mood of claustrophobia, paranoia, and despair. In order to achieve this, the lighting of the film is most important. There are three different types of lighting: key, fill, and back light. The key light is the main source of light in the film and is generally used to create the dark shadows and high contrast. The fill light is the soft contrasted light that fills in the shadows created by the key light. The back light is the light that shines on the back of the actors themselves which create highlights giving the actors shape. Film noir uses low-key lighting which implies that the ratio of key light to fill light is large which results in the high contrast shadows. In film noir, there is no stability in the scenes. The angles are off and are not very well arranged in the frame to give a sense of instability to imply an unsafe world for the characters in it.

Questions:
1. Do you think Jimmy was one of the heroes in the story?
2. What is the difference between the country and city in this story?
3. Is never being able to escape your past another aspect of the genre of film noir?