I noted that Tourneur like to create parallel worlds of light and dark. The focal character travels back and forth between them, attempting to choose which world they'll live in. Jeff's mistake in Out of the Past is his belief that he can live in both. By the end he realizes (and pays for) that mistake. As I mentioned in our discussion, I think his actions at the end are to save Anne from making a similar mistake through her relationship with him.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Night and Day
I noted that Tourneur like to create parallel worlds of light and dark. The focal character travels back and forth between them, attempting to choose which world they'll live in. Jeff's mistake in Out of the Past is his belief that he can live in both. By the end he realizes (and pays for) that mistake. As I mentioned in our discussion, I think his actions at the end are to save Anne from making a similar mistake through her relationship with him.
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Bridgeport, really, is this unreal paradise. A small and out of the way town in California where nobody bothers anybody else. It is a daydream for Jeff, but not his reality. Ann is this perfect woman that he wants, but can't have, and has to accept this in the end, and meet his fate through the dark world he has created for himself. The Kid becomes the last tie to the dark and light in the end, and being mute is a good metaphor for the dark, that some things are best left in the past and unspoken of.
ReplyDeleteI had never thought of the movie in that light before. I don't believe that he wanted to live in both worlds. I think Jeff was put into a situation where there was no way of getting out of it. Witt told him that he had to stay there and do the favor of stealing the tax papers in San Francisco. I couldn't understand why Jeff would have stayed because he was satisfied with the small town life he lived with Anne. I think he either feared for his life at the hands of Witt and his henchmen or he had some form of obligation because he had failed him with his involvement with Kathy in his first assignment. He was usually a man who took his detective job seriously in my opinion. He was trying to make up for his weakness.
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ReplyDeleteAt the end I wanted for Jeff to wear a wire, because in the noir genre the bad guy (Kaithe?/Wit) always tell what actually happened in turn giving themselves up. I wanted him to survive and get away with Anne.
ReplyDeleteMy impression of the final scenes of the film was that when Jeff found Whit's body, he realized Kathie was a lost cause - and so he chose Ann. He then decided to call the police in hopes of getting Kathie captured so he could be with Ann. Unfortunately, he still underestimated Kathie's psychopathic nature, and he ended up another one of her victims. -PK-
ReplyDeleteI agree. I thought he was only playing along with Kathie so he could turn her in and go back to Ann. I think he worried that there might always be someone else would come and try to black mail him. But, now that those people were gone, I felt he saw the "light" and the end of the tunnel. Even though he had his insecurities, he looked forward to the "happily ever after" he was trying to live in that small town.
DeleteYou know, speaking of Ann, she must have been one of the most understanding women of all time. I mean, the story Jeff tells her about his meeting and running away with Kathie should have been a huge red flag. Later, she asks Jeff if he saw her again and he replied he had. That would send most women over the edge (no one wants their man talking to their ex, especially when said ex and him had gone into hiding together). She is SO understanding that at the end of the movie, she tells Jeff to go hang out with Kathie one last time to see if that spark is still there. I repeat, Ann told Jeff it was OKAY to go and see if there was still some hot passion between him and Kathie! What!? She was either the most understanding companion ever, or she really liked emotional pain.
ReplyDeleteAnn and Katherine are total opposites of each other. At the beginning of the film, Jeff converses with Ann primarily in the day time and only tells the story of Katherine at night while Jeff only meets with Katherine during the evening. This shows that Ann is the "good girl" and Katherine is a tainted love that is only to be spoken about at night and in the shadows. It is rare that Jeff ever talks to Katherine around others as well. They often meet in a bar or when they can be alone together thus proving that Katherine is a bad influence.
ReplyDeleteI think from the first time Jeff caught Kathie in her lie (in stealing the money and shooting his partner) he realized she was no good. But though he knew she was no good, she was still appealing. I wish we could have seen more of Ann in the film. I think when Ann tells Jeff he should see if there's anything between him and Kathie...she's testing him to see what he would say. She even replies, "That's what I wanted to hear." I think a reason why Whit wanted Kathie back wasn't the money but to have her back..as a trophy. Whit even mentions having a horse that he wanted badly. In the beginning, Whit's descriptions of her as an ideal woman influences Jeff and he seduces her with his persistent charm. Initially she tells him to go away but then tells him where she goes often such as that cantina in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is also intriguing about Jeff is that, while he doesn't fit into the world of "light" that is Bridgeport, he doesn't fit into the "dark" world of New York & San Francisco either. He's honest, but happy to get his hands dirty when it suits him--he's this sort of gray, in-between figure that is not comfortable in either place.
ReplyDeleteI think that's why he has to die at the end, he's ultimately unredeemable for the narrative. The reason that Ann could sort of touch the darkness, as it were, and survive was because she never really succumbed to any temptation towards crime or sex. Conversely, Jeff did commit ver minor crimes and have sex, and even though he's ultimately a good person, he could not be permitted to survive for those reasons--he could not be redeemed by the "light" world while still remaining active in the dark. Kathy, of course, was dead from the beginning--she was a sexually active (if not promiscuous) woman committed serious crimes and remained in the dark at all times.
Even if accidental, I think the narrative message could be seen as saying that cultural (moral) transvestites cannot survive. Either one is or one is not, there is no in-between. As an in-betweener, Jeff had to die so that he wouldn't sully those around him.
Sorry, I don't mean to blather on, but another thought just occurred to me along these lines: Jeff's power to sully the "light" world is evident with Ann, but it is also evident with The Kid. The Kid commits murder to help/save Jeff.
DeleteHe yanks Joe off of a cliff, watches him plummet to his death, and shrugs it off like nothing happened. Maybe it's just a hole in the story telling, but it also speaks to Jeff's power to, even unintentionally, corrupt Bridgeport.
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DeleteI like the notion of Jeff as a moral transvestite, but it's what I meant when I said Jeff's mistake was thinking he could move between the two worlds without exacting any cost. It's a bit like the Donne quote at the end of Cat People: "black sin have betrayed to endless night/ My world's both parts, and both parts must die." Oliver and Alice don't mix the worlds of night and day, they simply ignore the night, assuming it's the same as the day.
ReplyDeleteOne question that has been eating at me since we watched Out of the Past is this: During the scene where they run into the bungalow to get out of the rain and they proceed to, we assume, have sex, they knock the lamp over and darken the room. Additional symbolism for me was when they were interacting sexually the door flew open by itself if I remember correctly.
DeleteBoth of these things could be dissected. When he succumbed to her and vice versa the lamp fell off and broke - essentially entering into the "dark". At that point Jeff's character could not go back to living his life solely in the light. As for the camera panning away from them getting ready to take their relationship to the next level to show the door opening up - well, this didn't take place too long after Sigmund Freud was writing books about sexualizing objects. It could have been a way to queue the viewer as to what was occurring on the couch.
I also noticed that some of the most tense moments were when characters from the "night" world would enter into the day world or the other way around. In fact, as you mentioned, the end may have been decided by Jeff trying to keep the two worlds separate. It all has to do with the atmosphere being created throughout the film. What I mean by that is there is nothing physically separating the two worlds. For example, its not like Kathie couldn't have lived in Bridgeport. It would feel uneasy to have her there, though, because of the walls we built as viewers in our minds.
ReplyDeleteI guess because of the time period and the genre everything is seen and interpreted and only black or white (positive or negative). I guess I don't always see it the way it was intended. I thought Jeff was basically a good guy who got dragged or caught up into something bad because of bad call and trusting someone he shouldn't have (his partner). His fault seemed to be his ability to be easily swayed or influenced. I don't think he wanted to see others as completely bad or unredeemable. He knew you, but didn't it wasn't his place to judge you. He just took you and life as it came. Hmm?
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