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

while the rain falls heavily outside and the wind blows through the open door.
Surreptitiously, the camera moves away from them onto the veranda before returning to the
room which is now lit only by moonlight, showing that time has elapsed, during which
they have made love. This revelatory manifestation has a strange effect of rupture,
heightened by the omission of human figures as the camera tracks towards the door and
prowls along the woods. The sexuality expressed through the falling rain, the door flying
open, the fireworks going off, all preserve the romanticism of these love scenes and most
importantly they were a skilful and expressive way to get round the Hollywood Code of
that time (p. 138).
When the tranquillity of Bridgeport is left behind, director Jacques Tourneur frames
the fateful transition in Markham / Bailey’s life by showing his silhouette, back to the
mountains (“Remember the mountains?”, as Kathie Moffett wistfully asked him once),
pass reluctantly through the gate of Sterling’s residence overlooking Lake Tahoe, as shown
in fig. 106 below. It is during this all-night car trip that Jeff tells Ann about his real name,
his past, how he had tracked Kathie Moffett to Mexico and fallen in love with her. We then
get to know how he and Kathie left unobtrusively for San Francisco and thought they could
live free of the past. We are finally told how the couple was discovered by Fisher and how
Kathie had shot him dead, leaving Jeff behind with the body and a bank book revealing she
had indeed stolen the 40,000 dollars.
As Ann drives away, we are back in the present, and Jeff walks up the driveway to
squarely face his past. Again the scene clearly shows the division between the peaceful
mountainous countryside behind Jeff and the mansion’s front door with the associations it
has, especially of power, greed, and corruption. The picture shows him standing right in
the middle of a prisonlike gate, hands in his raincoat pockets, pensive, and his face barely
seen through the bars. This significant shot illustrates Bailey’s virtual condemnation and
the fact that the director shoots him from behind against the estate’s steel gate diminishes
the protagonist figure, making him look like a powerless prisoner occluded by the
imposing bars.
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