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

Figure 106. Out of the Past
The scenes in San Francisco, involving the murder of Leonard Eels (Ken Niles), the
whereabouts of the tax records (one should not forget that income tax papers are the
“Maltese falcon” of this movie, so to speak; they are the reason why Jeff was hired by
Whit, to recover them from Eels) and the double-cross of Eel’s secretary, Meta Carson
(Rhonda Fleming, another victim of the killer in The Spiral Staircase). All these scenes
take place in rapid succession, maze-like, forcing the characters to find out what truly is
going on, as they sense traps from every quarter. Both Bailey and Sterling know that they
have been double-crossed, either by Kathie or Meta, but in the end, details (of the
excessively complex plotting, notably in the San Francisco section) do not seem to matter
in the film.
Regarding locations, Out of the Past is extremely rich in its collection of scenes at
differentiated places, from Bridgeport, to Acapulco, to New York and San Francisco, and
for a short time Los Angeles. While there is a sense that Bridgeport and Acapulco are
idyllic places for Jeff and Kathie to escape their criminal life respectively, New York and
San Francisco are seen as huge, sprawling American cities, continuously in flux, and both
spectacular and sordid at the same time, with all their amazing transformations and their
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