MUBI

The world of Film Noir exists as a kind of alternate reality, a shadow-dream landscape where fate dictates the next move and nothing can be done but to delay the inevitable. It’s antecedents are to be found equally in the compact melodrama of 30’s American gangster genre, visually in some German expressionism or French poetic fatalism, and in the endless pulp detective stories that were so popular at the time. Bookended somehwre between 1941’s The Maltese Falcon and 1958’s Touch Of Evil, Noir worked the dark end of the street, and no finer example exists than Jacques Tourneur’s ‘Out Of The Past’. The soon-to-be iconic Robert Mitchum was cast in the lead, after Bogart attempted to get Warner’s to buy the rights to no avail and John Garfield and Dick Powell turned it down. After some years of playing bit parts and with a few key supports (Story Of GI Joe) 1947 was the year Mitchum broke through to stardom, with this film and also Dmytryk’s ‘Crossfire’ and Raoul Walsh’s ‘Pursued’. He was always confident it would happen for him apparently, telling his early girlfriends to ‘stick with me kid and you’ll be farting through silk’.

The location for the opening is anti-noir, a small Californian town in brightest day, but immediately the ‘man in black’ drives in and the metaphorical darkness starts to descend. The thug is on a mission from Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to find Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) and bring him back to square some unfinished business. Jeff has found respectability as a local Gas station owner and a pure-hearted girl to love him, but the invitation is one he can’t refuse, indeed it’s one he knew would eventually arrive. He drives up with Anne (Virginia Huston) to Whit’s Lake Tahoe mansion and in a flashback we learn of the messy business that has seen his dark past collide with his sunny present. Jeff was a private detective who, with his ineffectual partner Fisher (Steve Brodie) is listening to the detail of an incident where Whit was shot and robbed of $40,000, the kicker being it was Whit’s girlfriend Kathie (Jane Greer) who did the deed. Jeff tracks her to Acapulco, his job to bring her back to Whit, who doesn’t want vengeance, he wants her back, he says ‘once you see her you’ll understand’. Jeff sees her, and he understands.

One theme that runs through a situation like this, not exclusive to noir, is the helplessness of the alpha male in the face of the femme fatale, the roots of the dilemma not only being biological but steeped in a Judeo-Christian moral framework. Western theology was based on a demonising of the power women held over men, inducing them to base pursuits of the flesh instead of the higher, more ‘godly’ pursuits. Kathie is first seen by Jeff almost as an ecstatic vision, a goddess surrounded by light, coming ‘out of the sun’, at that moment every moral framework he had is shot to bits, culminating with his comment after she declares she didn’t take the money, ‘Baby, I don’t care’. Jeff is undone and every bit as helpless as Whit was in the face of a scheming, beautiful woman, his code that defined his tough guy world has no answer to her power while his blood is up, it will take some serious cooling to give him a chance to recover his true self, this is at the heart of the dilemma. The pure Anne, sexless and virginal is the ‘ideal’ or ‘madonna’ type who’s love will absolve the memory of the ‘whore’ Kathie and redeem Jeff.

Whit arrives to check on the progress of the investigation, but Jeff, now in love with Kathie stalls him successfully and he and Kathie disappear to San Francisco together to start a new life. Fisher has figured out the set up and breaks in on Jeff’s arrangement wanting part of the $40,000. Kathie shoots Fisher and leaves Jeff alone, disappearing once again. Jeff moves on with his life forgetting her,‘everyone forgets’ he once said to her about Whit, but he knew it was a lie. Flashback over he arrives at Whit’s to discover Kathie returned to Whit after shooting Fisher. Jeff will be in the frame for murder unless he carries out another job for Whit, and the twists continue until Jeff is betrayed by Kathie once more, Jeff saying to her ’You’re no good and neither am I. we deserve each other’. Anne opines on Kathie, ‘she can’t be all bad’, Jeff replies ‘She comes the closest’. Jeff arranges for Kathie to meet her fate in suitably gruesome circumstances and then knowing he can’t give Anne the respectability and pure love she needs he disappears, ensuring her opinion of him is compromised in the process so she can forget the past, where he never could, doomed to be haunted by his until the end.

Jacques Tourner, one imagines well versed in French Catholic tropes has at one point Kathie appear as a de facto nun at the end of the film, head covered and poised like some avenging sister superior, the resonance subtle but unmistakable and we are again unsure of the moral terrain. Part of Film Noir’s appeal is the ambiguity of the characters and Out Of The Past is the exemplar in this, as we’re never sure of the depth of love of Kathie or of Jeff at the end. Are they acting out of compulsion or duplicity, cursed by an attachment that can’t be understood at a logical level, but only dealt with emotionally and urgently? Mitchum was the embodiment of the sure footed, quick witted, taciturn and intelligent Noir ‘hero’, and it’s this substrate that allows the overtones of tragedy to play out so effectively, if a man like this has no chance when confronted with the uber-femme fatale Kathie, what does that mean for the rest of us? Greer, at the time the 22 year old girlfriend of Howard Hughes was never to reach the same heights, but here she is perfect and convincing. Douglas, all coiled menance and teeth leapt to stardom shortly after, this was onlty his second film. Out Of The Past was overlooked for many years, but time has been kinder to this than many other big films of the time and in retrospect it can be seen as one of the prime achievements of post WW2 American cinema.and one of the best of Film Noir.

Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past is one of the most highly regarded products of classical film noir, a stylistic/thematic movement generally agreed to have spanned from 1941-58. Furthermore, Out of the Past, is a particularly unique brand of film noir; while most of the shots are lit for night, the shadows are not as prominent and/or expressionistic/abstracting as they are in many other famous works of film noir. While there are many scenes that are lit in what would generally be considered to be a more conventional manner, in terms of representing the genre, most of the scenes do not take advantage of the super expressionistic use of shadow that often wholly covers faces and bodies and sometimes, as a result, even distorts their appearance. Instead, Tourneur incorporates such a use of shadow only in scenes where emotions are heightened and it seems that his employment of the lighting technique has the intention of evoking a certain subjective feeling to the viewer of the film. Moreover, instead of overusing the lighting technique as some may argue is characteristic of some of the other more popular products of film noir such as Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil or Anthony Mann’s T-Men, Tourneur tastefully incorporates such as overtly expressionistic and deliberate lighting techniques and seems to save them for the most emotional moments of the film.
Some may argue that Tourneur even uses his film noir-esque style and composition so intuitively that he alludes to larger themes through symbols that may be derived from respective shots and compositions. For example, in the first scene that we see Ann and Jeff together, Tourneur artfully separates the lovers with a thorny shrub of some sort. Furthermore, later on in the scene, one can notice that the shadows of the branches are projected onto Ann’s face. This interesting artful use of lighting and composition is repeated again at the end of the film when Jeff comes back for Ann at the end and the two would-be lovers are sitting in the forest, again, separated by thorny branches with their shadowy reflections resting on their faces. One cannot help but notice how the over-all misé-en-scene of this scene helps to create an atmosphere in which we as viewers suspect our main characters are somehow fettered by the overbearing constraints of fate. This fatalistic atmosphere is actually characteristic of the genre.
Also, in accordance with the general tendencies of the genre, the film is narrated in a novelistic fashion, focusing mainly upon a flashback to drive the plot forward. Paul Schrader, a famous screenwriter and film critic, offers up wonderful insight on film noir’s preoccupation with the past: “… there is a passion for the past and present, but a fear of the future. The noir hero dreads to look ahead, but instead tries to survive by the day, and if unsuccessful at that, he retreats to the past. Thus, film noir’s techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity; then submerge these self-doubts in mannerism and style.” (Schrader) Furthermore, it is also a film that seems to be constantly on the move, in that the characters are, quite obviously, always on the run, both from each other and from the constraints of mainstream society itself. Another common characteristic of film noir that is represented in Out of the Past is the rejection of the Aristotelian narrative and/or the dependence of the classical, happy, Hollywood ending. Often we begin film noir productions, the characters already seem to be ill fated from the get-go. Despite that, this film is not unique in the sense that it includes not only gangsters and detectives but also the figure of the femme fatale, all elements strikingly ubiquitous in the realm of film noir. However, in terms of the setting, one may say that it is quite representative of the common traits of the genre. Specifically, most of the scenes take place in urban locations, despite a few scenes shot in the country. Be that as it may, the nature scenes that are shot even in the most idyllic places are darkened not only due to the fact that most of the shots are lit for night but also due to the fact that there is a certain darkness pervading from the characters themselves that helps add to the general dark ambiance of what one might say helps to make a good film noir.
The question of why film noir has a French name, despite the fact that it is surely an American phenomenon, is one that has often confused students and film enthusiasts alike. Furthermore, there is no doubt that understanding the answer to that question is an imperative step in being able to properly comprehend film noir as a genre. One has to hearken back all the way to 1941 and remember the state of world affairs; namely, the world is at war and most important to our discussion, American films were no longer being exported to Europe. In 1946, roughly a year after the end of WW2, the first writing appeared in French journals dubbing the wartime cinema of Hollywood as American film noir. Thus, although film noir was an American phenomenon, it was not labeled and categorized until the wartime films of Hollywood reached France in 1946. Surely, this helps to account for the unique diversity of style and themes within the genre. Be that as it may, understanding the reasoning behind the disillusion felt by many Americans of the time period helps one understand many of the darker themes that are commonly associated with the genre; yet, it also helps us understand why cinema was so preoccupied with this notion of the femme-fatale or the black widow and why this figure was so prevalent in the dark tales of film noir cinema.
The ability of the woman to step out of the domestic realm during and after the Second World War really provided an unpleasant culture shock for a lot of the American male population. Men feared that women, now given these new freedoms, would leave their homes and children behind and go off and indulge in their greatest hedonistic whims and desires. Perhaps then, these femme fatales are the embodiment of this fear, created – of course – by male screenwriters and authors, who, sensing this masculine cultural malaise incorporate it into their stories and films. Generally, many critics and scholars feel that American screenwriters may have felt some connection to the great disillusionment felt at the early part of the 20th century after the First World War, made famous by such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner in their great ex-patriot novels. Film critic, James Nemore, writes in his essay on film noir, namely, on the feelings of great French director and film critic André Bazin regarding film noir: “The importance of existentialism to the period has long been recognized; what needs to be emphasized is that French existentialism was intertwined with a residual surrealism, which was crucial for the reception of any art described as noir.” (Nemore) Perhaps this surrealism that Bazin speaks of lies in the expressionist use of lighting so commonly used in the composition of a conventional film noir motion picture. The notion that we are all disillusioned, ill-fated beings, walking through an urban hell in an almost perpetual night is quite a deep, dark, surreal notion.
Perhaps the most striking achievement of Tourneur and his cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, both of whom had picked up a lot of their talents from working famous Val Lewton B-movie horror unit, was to turn the most serene, pleasurable and peaceful settings into ones that become ominous, dark, shady and perhaps even down right vice-inducing. For example, the film opens up in a remote mountain town with Jeff laying outside with Ann in a beautiful natural setting yet, the lighting is done as if the scene were to be shot at night so we don’t really get the full effect of the brightness of the day. Instead, the chiaroscuro of the scene has an almost overcast, grayed over feeling that gives a sort of ominous tone to the composition. The overall lighting combined within the debatable symbols one may interpret based upon the shadows of thorny branches being projected on the faces of the lovers produces an overall misé en scene that leaves the viewer with a feeling that some one of more of these characters have somehow been ill fated. This of course is characteristic of film noir, to make every scene, even those at night appear dark and overcast; furthermore, it is also characteristic of film noir to have characters who cannot escape their fate. Some critics argue that the generally darker composition of shots in film noir results in a heightened feeling of fatalism both being projected from the characters and being induced in the viewers themselves as they attempt to relate to the characters on screen.
The ending of the film is while, strikingly uncharacteristic of the larger amount of Hollywood product of the 20th century up to this point its history, it is actually quite representative of the style of film noir type of dénouements. Rejecting the sort of logic from Aristotelian poetics, film noir resists falling back on the happy ending. Thus, further relating the film noir to the form of the novel, particularly that of the existential modern/post-modern 19-20th century novel, and allowing film to become more of an free flowing art form than simply and constrained and regulated form of entertainment. In the end of the film, it isn’t quite clear who has crossed whom and moreover, it isn’t even quite clear who is being criticized and who is being lauded, if anyone at all. Perhaps this is reflective on post-WW2 society in America where cultural boundaries and identities are becoming more and more skewed, with the culture changing and women taking more of an independent role in society, the culture is no longer what men have known it to be before the war. Thus, the villains and the heroes in society are not so well-distinguished as they might have been in the past… as Paul Schrader so wonderfully puts it on his tell-all, be-all essay on film noir and the changes in American culture both during and after WW2: “… one finds the upward mobile forces of the thirties have halted; frontierism has turned to paranoia and claustrophia. The small-time gangster has now made it big and sits in the mayor’s chair, the private eye has quit the police force in disgust, and the young heroine, sick of going along for the ride, is taking others for a ride.” (Schrader) Thus, perhaps film noir was the best possible artistic medium that could have ever come along to allow the filmmakers of America represent their own culture and its rapidly changing identity during the 1940s and 50s.

Bibliography

1. Schrader, Paul. “Notes on Film Noir.” Notes on Film Noir (Paul Schrader, 1971). Film Comment. Web. 23 May 2010. <http://i.mtime.com/Noir/blog/1433838/>.
2. Scruggs, Charles. ""The Power of Blackness": Film Noir and Its Critics." American Literary History 4 Nov. 2004: 675-87. Project Muse. Web. 23 May 2010. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/alh/summary/v016/16.4scruggs.html>.
3. Nemore, James. “American Film Noir: The History of an Idea.” Film Quarterly Winter 1995-6: 12-28. JSTOR. Web. 24 May 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213310>.
4. Palmer, R. Barton. “The Divided Self and the Dark City: Film Noir and Liminality.” Symploke 1-2 15 (2007): 66-79. Project Muse. Web. 23 May 2010. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sym/summary/v015/15.1-2.palmer.html>.

“Out of the Past” is, quite simply, the quintessential noir. This is the film I would hold up as an answer to the question “what is film noir?”

Everything that defines the classic film noir is present in this work by Jacques Tourneur: low-key lighting; a cynical private investigator; a femme fatale; a dangerous gangster complete with henchmen; a lengthy flashback accompanied by a doom-laden voice-over narration; hard-boiled, sarcastic dialogue; the city; crime; fate; death; a depressing and bleak conclusion; and a dark, sardonic, and existential outlook on life. “Out of the Past” is special.

The opening of the film is very similar to the opening of “The Killers.” A shot from inside a moving car details our entrance into Bridgeport, California. In this small town, a man with an identity crisis (played by the brilliant Robert Mitchum) is hiding from his past. His assumed name is Jeff Bailey, formerly Jeff Markham. Who is he? A “marked” man. Markham is spending his days operating a gas station. When Joe Stefanos (an old thug from out of the past) spots him in a chance encounter as he drives through the town, Markham is soon afterwards embroiled in murders and set-ups galore. Fate works against the noir protagonist again, as always. He can’t win for losing. No wonder Markham is so cynical and world-weary.

Kathie Moffett, played to great effect by Jane Greer, is a wonderfully beautiful and destructive femme fatale. She shoots and kills no less than three men in the film, and is indirectly responsible for two more deaths as well. She’s more than poison, she’s death incarnate. Kathie first appears in the film walking towards Markham from the direction of a Mexican movie house named Cine Pico. She’s like a movie in that she’s a captivating dream, as unattainable as a fixture on the silver screen; but now, incarnated and walking directly towards Markham, who represents the audience. Throughout the film, Kathie is always associated with light, as are a great many other femmes fatale. When Markham first sees her coming from the Cine Pico Theater, he remarks that she was “coming out of the sun.” Later in the film, he remarks on another occasion that “she walked in out of the moonlight.” And finally, in yet another scene, Markham catches a glimpse of her “walking up the road in the headlights.” She truly is like a film, which is no more than a series of flickering images of light projected onto a blank slate; an incessantly shifting series of images, just as the femme fatale is constantly shifting her allegiances as well as her own appearance to others.

“Out of the Past” presents the dichotomy of city versus country. The city is a dangerous cauldron of violence and instability, whereas the country is a serene place of stability and refuge. The noir anti-hero often retreats to the country town in an attempt to escape from his past, and to live out an uneventful existence in peace. City versus country is a thematic dichotomy that resonates in countless other noirs. Of course, in a film whose very name is “Out of the Past,” escape seems quite impossible from the start.

Take note of the moment when Markham stands up after he first sees Kathie. He drops a coin accidentally, and it rolls all the way across the cantina floor until it stops right at Kathie’s table. This effectively symbolizes her magnetic presence. This is also a concrete symbolization of Markham’s disastrous luck. When Markham first kisses Kathie on the beach, note the tangled netting that surrounds him in the frame. He’s trapped by the femme fatale’s spider web. Note also the barred gates at Whit Sterling’s (played by Kirk Douglas) estate when Markham returns “back into the fold” after years of evasive action. The bars loom over Markham as he stands in silhouette, and imprison him.

If classic films noir represent the crowning achievement of Hollywood cinema, as I believe they do, “Out of the Past” is certainly the prize jewel in that crown. As a representative jewel it sparkles brightly, like the tiny light dancing precariously in Kathie’s hypnotic eyes every time we see her on the screen.

http://bit.ly/duEF4J

“But I didn’t take anything. I didn’t, Jeff. Don’t you believe me?”

“Baby, I don’t care.”

That exchange in my opinion sums up what film noir is all about. The protagonist of a film noir knows what he’s getting into and what will eventually happen, but he’s compelled by his darker impulses and the femme fatale to go through with it anyway. Double Indemnity started this philosophy, but Out of the Past gave it an almost lyrical quality. It has an endless amount of fantastic one liners, double crosses, dark shadows, and smoking-all staples of film noir. It also has perhaps noir’s greatest protagonist and femme fatale. Robert Mitchum’s persona as the world weary, laconic, and indifferent hero was never more on display than with this role. He’s simply the coolest movie star ever. He goes through the film knowing just what is happening to him and hoping to escape, but he also understands that his fate is inevitable. He’s just a pawn in Jane Greer’s game and can’t escape from her. By the end he realizes that his only way out is death. Out of the Past has been called the definitive film noir for a reason, and it demands to be seen again and again.