Out of The Past is the favorite of the three film noirs that we watched so far. I won’t give an overview of the plot since we all watched it and knows what happens. The characters are what really do it for me. Jeff is the typical noir detective but adds his own unique demeanor and witty personality. He’s calm no matter the situation, and is so suave and funny, you cant help but find him likable. This makes us feel sorry when he does risk his life and job for a woman. Speaking of Kathie, she also turns out to be very likable. Yes, she is the femme fatale and yes, she does betray Jeff. But she is extremely beautiful, cute, and did seem legitimately happy when she was with him. Their relationship was very believable. When she pulls off those adorable teary puppy-dog eyes and acts all innocent, how can you not feel sorry for her when she gets slapped by Whit. Of course, this is part of her innocent-act to get guys as well as the audience to side with her so she can get her way.

Even the supporting characters like Meta and Whit were great. Whit was charismatic, always smiling, and wasn’t made out to be a complete ass like most “antagonists” are. Meta was sweet and caring and wanted nothing more to be with Jeff. She even gave him a chance to see Kathie one more time to see if he truly fell out of love with her. Meta trusted him enough to know he would do the right thing and come back to her. That is true love and Jeff did not deserve a dame like that. I think he knew this which is why the blind kid nodded with she asked if Jeff was running away with Kathie. We know this wasn’t true but I feel he said yes anyway because the kid knew that Jeff didn’t deserve her after all he did and would want her to move on to someone better.

This film shares a lot of similarities with Double Indemnity. Both are told in flashbacks. The main characters are smooth/witty talkers. They are clam under pressure. They fall for the pretty girl at first sight. The femme fatale starts off as an innocent, happy woman then later states how much she hates her lover and wants the detective to help in exchange for her love. We soon find out that killing is not a hard thing to do for these ladies. Both protagonists make a rash decision (that’s not totally out of character) to break the rules to be with her. At the end, the main character’s morality is tested when they have to choose between the right thing to do or stay with the beauty. Ultimately we find out that deep down they are a good person despite all the rules they broke and do the ethical choice by ending it with her. Walter Neff’s choice by framing her with Nino and then shooting her to get himself off the hook is debatable whether that was the most “ethical” choice, but we can probably all agree that she deserved it.

Here we find a case where the protagonist of the story cannot seem to run away from his past, thus the movie title “Out of the Past”. Jeff Bailey (really Jeff Markham), is a man who after trying to escape from his past, ends up confronting it until his last breathe. After being found by his original boss Whit, Whit tells Jeff that he must do one more job, in addition to his dark past. His job is to find a woman named Kathie Moffat (Whit’s ex-girlfriend), and bring her back to Whit. She also had a dark past where she shot Whit and stole $40,000 from him and ran away. As Jeffhttps://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/shadowplay/wp-admin/post-new.php meets Kathie, Jeff falls for Kathie and soon enough, they run away together getting into more shenanagans. It got to the point where Jeff fought his own partner protecting their secret relationship, and Kathie ends up shooting his partner. Kathie runs away while Jeff cleans up the murder he is not responsible for, and finds a deposit check of $40,000.

At another point, Whit has another job where once again, Jeff meets Kathie where she tries to make him fall in love again, but if fails. This new job in the end causes another person to die, which is the person who was framing Whit of tax fraud, as well as framing Jeff as the killer. Finally towards the end, Kathie kills Whit, and Jeff tries to run away and continue his life with his current girlfriend Ann. However, Kathie stops him and gives him two life decisions, he can either leave and will be framed for the deaths, or he can runaway with her. Choosing to leave with Kathie, he informs the police of her on a secret phone call and the police stop them later on when they leave. Kathie in anger, kills Jeff as the police begin shooting the car.

This is a story where there wasn’t really a true “hero” of the story because every main character had a dark past. What makes this noir different from the others is the fact that Jeff tried to make the best decisions rather than the right ones to get out of a situation. At the end, the best decision Jeff could make at the time is to completely stop Kathie by calling the police even though he was killed. In a way, knowing that Kathie will continue to pursue him, he instead sacrificed himself to end the double faced, Kathie.

In the film “Out of the past” we see yet another detective getting involved in a case he has to solve. It starts out with our detective Jeff in a small town actually living a false life going under a different identity His past catches up to him and now he has a new objective. To retrieve certain information for his old client who he double crossed. In the is noir film we have Jeff the hardboiled detective who actually attempts to escape his terrible decision. The femme fatale in this film I believe is the most corrupt from all three films we have watched so far. Kathie did not hesitate to kill anyone and every time she appeared in the film it meant some kind of trouble for Jeff. The relationship with the femme fatale starts much like the other 2 noir films. Jeff was called in and given a case to find her and bring her back. The reward was high enough to warrant the thought of going after her. Once Jeff met the femme fatale it was all downhill from there. She convinces Jeff to run away from Whit, the reward and be with her. Jeff is so infatuated he does just that. We can see that this is the classic noir film femme fatale set up. The private investigator tosses aside his case to get the girl.

In this film we see that Jeff is not interested in the femme fatale anymore but he cannot seem to escape her and her web of lies no matter what he does. He is also less morally corrupt than the other main characters. He made a mistake accepting the femme fatale and he tried to get away and lead a completely different life with a new woman. Instead of the main character looking for trouble the trouble finds him and does not want to let him go.

The story and film of Double Indemnity circle around the proclaimed protagonist of Walter Nuff, who is an insurance sales man and little did he know his life would change once he met Phyllis. Phyllis is portrayed as the femme fatale towards Nuff and both of them come to the conclusion of killing her husband by making it look like an accident, but with Nuff’s knowledge he knows the best way to gain more for their dirty deed. The book and the film both have a different way of telling the story, such as the death of Phyllis and how Nuff got shot for example. The Noir film describes an intense story between emotion and fear of getting caught. The femme fatale played a huge role to the influence of Huff because of her beauty he was blinded in making the right decision on what is good. The conclusion due to the femme fatale, holds Nuff to the despair end of no women, no luck and no life in the film, and leaves the viewers thinking he’s on the blink of death. Still in the book his end, is Keyes his friend in the company or the justice in the story, decides to let Huff live with what he did and send him off in a ship with Phyllis.

Compared to The Maltese Falcon, they both do portray the Femme Fatale as a strong influence to the protagonist and they both give off this tension of what could possibly happen next. I believe both gave off the perfect sense of a Noir Film and both were highly up on the interest.

In the film Double Indemnity, was exactly about the topic we discussed in class, femme fatale. From the  notes we took it completely described one of the main characters who was  Phyllis Dietrichson. The femme fatale of this movie was a beautiful woman who had a plan, not only one who she planned with the main character but also another which was one of her own plans. Just like any femme fatale she lead the main character believing they will end up together happily but it only cost the main character into danger and finding out the real truth. After they both finished their plan of killing Mr. Dietrichson, the main character, Walter Neff was expecting a plan within him and Phyllis, but Phyllis had a different plan of her own which she betrayal Walter an her own stepdaughter. After Walter found out that Phyllis was seeing her stepdaughters boyfriend behind her back and he went to confront Phyllis explaining why she betrayal him and she said it was only to persuade Nino into killing her stepdaughter due to jealously. In this particular scene you can see Phyllis again pulling her femme fatale to get things her way. In the end the “Femme fatale” that Phyllis has been portraying did not work out for her because she did not get things her way and died.

In conclusion I find both the Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity similar due to the femme fatale characters played in each movie but unfortunately they both did not get the things they wanted their way.