Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

on, Ann, who represents his hope for a future life, steadily feels threatened. She asks him
several questions and he gives her mainly vague answers, thus establishing the mystery
that veils his character. The camera moves slightly away from them both only to make the
contrast between their disquiet with the peaceful scenery, emphasising Jeff’s laconic and
lethargic look.
The existential figure of the secretive Jeff seems to mirror the mystery of the plot
itself. The viewer is constantly unsure of Jeff’s feeling and intentions until the very end, as
I show later. The narrative is organised in such a way that we cannot truly make out the
many different places Jeff has been to (“one too many,” as he tells Ann) or the reason why
Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine) has decided to come to Bridgeport. All these explanations
are unknowable until the flashback. Nevertheless, the kind of displacement in terms of
points of view in the film (especially the switch that occurs from a subjective viewpoint –
that of Jeff while he is with Ann – to an objective one – when he is in front of Whit’s
mansion in fig. 106) coincides with Jeff’s entrapment and heightens even more the
narrative confusion. 96
The Kid Jimmy, who works for Jeff at the station, also seems to be elusive. He does
not have much influence on the plot; however, in a secondary role he manages to fill a gap
in “the circuit of language and information”, as Fujiwara notes. Although mute, the Kid
establishes a limit to the flow of information and speculation that goes on throughout Out
of the Past. Just like Helen in The Spiral Staircase, he is deprived of a voice thereby
compellingly signifying the act of enforced repression. The film opens with Joe Stefanos
asking him “Where’s Bailey?” (the question seems to insist upon the multiple locations the
main character has been to), and from this beginning to the very end (as I will show in the
conclusion of this chapter) the Kid is a figurative presence, so to speak, showing the
audience that “we are in a labyrinth of reciprocal false communications - the world of film
noir” (Fujiwara 1998:142).
Ultimately, the final act of entrapment (this time both physical and psychological)
is that of the hero, expressed by malign fate: “My timing was a few minutes off”, Jeff says
sorrowfully to Petey (Wallace Scott), the taxi driver in San Francisco, after coming from
the apartment building where he found Eels (Ken Niles) dead. Chris Fujiwara shares the
96 Tourneur once commented that “The script was very hard to follow, and very involved; often in this type
of film the audience is deliberately confused, because if your story becomes too pat then it’s often dull”
(Fujiwara 1998:141).
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