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

Figure 104. The Lady from Shanghai
While this notion has not always been well understood from the aesthetic or critical
points of view, importance must be given to the mise-en-abyme as it seems undeniable that
certain texts and paintings are self-reflexive, as they explicitly reflect how they are
constructed and how they function. The convex mirror used at the rear of Van Eyck’s
Marriage of Arnolfini, in which viewers can see the most remarkable reflections (including
Van Eyck’s own minuscule self-portrait), I think, stands as perhaps the most famous
example of this dramatic urge on the part of the artist.
2.3.1.3 Conclusion: The final (sexual) trap in
Out of the Past
As seen so far, Out of the Past contains most of the important elements that
constitute film noir, from a definite flashback structure that stresses melodramatic doom to
the morally ambiguous atmosphere that envelops character and motive, together with a
dark and convoluted plot with double- and triple-crosses by a femme fatale and other
leading figures, such as the racketeer Whit Sterling. The voiceover is also crucial to the
impact of the whole film and the narrative technique is particularly refined in this film, that
is, the indirect and gradual way in which information is disclosed by and to the hero. It is
almost as if the voice is guiding his journey through the noir labyrinth and the viewer
shares not only this information but also his ways of absorbing and responding to it.
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