Out of the Past

Before watching Out of the Past, I had never heard of film noir, and had no idea what it was. Know I know film noir is basically smoking in trench coats in low-key lighting. I liked Out of the Past, even though some parts of the plot got confusing, it wasn't really important if you didn't know what exactly was going on. Out of the past used a lot of low key lighting, which is typical to film noir. Low-key lighting was used in a lot of different scenes, like while they were driving through the night or in Whit's house. Low key lighting wasn't used during the scenes of Jeff Bailey's present life, but was used during the scenes of his past life. This gave the effect that his present life is more boring and safe and that he used to be involved in dangerous and mysterious things. Just about every single scene in the movie had someone smoking in it which is another typical element of film noir. There were a lot of mysterious aspects to the movie too, which I liked. The character of Kathie is mysterious because you never know whether she is lying or not, also the ending scene with the message the kid gives Ann leaves you thinking about it.