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

same view about Jeff’s fate and also elaborates about the traumatic force that time (the
past) plays in the film:
The story of Out of the Past is less that of a man in the thrall of a malevolent
destiny than that of a man whose timing is off, who suffers a discrepancy between
his personal time and the time of actual events. The switch in the title from Build
My Gallows High to Out of the Past reflects this displacement of emphasis (with its
corresponding philosophical shift). The original title denotes an irresistible
destructive power. The changed title indicates an unwelcome movement across
time and locates the central drama in the confrontation with the past. (Fujiwara
1998:145)
2.3.1.1 Modes and Subverted Uses of the Flashback
Although this is not always the case, the flashback in film noir is usually a narrative
device used to recall images of an inexorable fate. In Out of the Past this narrative device
assumes several contours. The first of these stages what has already occurred in the past
life of Jeff Bailey and helps us reconstruct the primary narrative so as to understand how
and why he has ended up hiding in that small town running a gas station with the help of a
devoted deaf teenager. Through the first confessional flashback, characterised by the
protagonist’s retrospective examination, Jeff addresses Ann. Yet, very often in noirs the
flashbacks can be self-directed or self-addressed (see p. 189), and as in this film, they can
be extensive - occupying nearly the entire film, as is the case of The Killers. In its classic
form, the haunting and obsessive past of the noir characters is narrated to the spectator by
interrupting the present flow of the film narrative and entering the subjective world of the
protagonist. The quest for an answer to an enigma from the past involves a mental process
which in turn relates to the subjectivity of consciousness. In this type of confessional
flashback the temporal order gets reversed, emphasising even further the subjective realm.
In this scene, Bailey starts relating his troubled past to Ann by means of a long flashback.
He starts at the point in the story about three years earlier when his name was Jeff
Markham and when he was working as a private detective in crime-ridden New York City,
working with Jack Fisher, the partner he would refer to as a “stupid, oily gent”.
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