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.