In the Dark: Fatalism and Metacinema in Out of the Past (1947)
Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947)
Identifying Genre
Raise the following question: what makes a particular movie part of a genre? I know I have, countless times, mentioned my disapproval of one or two genres. Sometimes, if I want to get to know someone, or during small talk, I ask them what kind of movies they like, expecting something like “westerns” or “romance” as an answer. Certainly, then, there must be something that makes a genre what a genre is; in other words, there must be a list of characteristics of a genre that, given these characteristics being found in a particular movie, this movie is therefore a under its umbrella. But this story is as old as leather boots, and I don’t intend to begin a “Wittgensteinian” discussion about the possibility of definition. What I do want, however, is to point out that there are ways in which we are able to understand and to expect something from movies based on the conventions they follow. When I watch western movies, for example, I expect to see something like a former gunslinger who left a life of violence behind sometime after the Civil War, choosing to settle down as a rancher, but who is forced to pick up arms again in order to defend a young lady from ruthless bandits. But why is this important, and what does it have to do with Out of the Past? A couple of reasons: first, I believe the idea of fatalism is present in much of film noir—and in fact in much of genre cinema—because the conventions that allows us to classify a movie according to a genre are narrative constraints within the screen. Second, I want to defend this position by pulling metacinematic examples from the movie Out of the Past, ultimately concluding that metacinema represents the fatalism in film noir discussed by, for example, Robert Pippin, since the metacinematic, at a high level, consists of narratives’ self-consciousness of themselves as narrative and of its coming to terms with it.
Fatalism for metacinema
Out of the Past epitomizes film noir with its fatalistic themes, doomed characters, and dark, smoky atmospheres. The film follows Jeff Bailey (played by Robert Mitchum), a private eye whose attempts to escape his past inevitably fail, drawing him back into a world he thought he’d left behind. From his fateful encounter with femme fatale Kathie Moffat (portrayed by Jane Greer) to his dealings with gangster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas), Jeff’s choices are constrained by the noir genre's fatalistic framework. In this world, decisions are not entirely free but preordained by genre conventions that echo fatalism, where the protagonist’s fate seems sealed from the outset. Fatalism is also imbedded in the film’s core: the first forty minutes, almost half of its total length, is dedicated to Jeff Bailey’s storytelling. He tells Ann Miller (Virginia Huston), the “good girl” in the story, the details of how he got to where he is, who he was, and the kinds of things he had done. The retrospective aspect of this is suggestive of a story with a known ending—we are all knowingly trapped in a story with a defined and fatal end.
But what I think is most revealing about this fatalistic notion is the way it interacts with metacinema here. The dialogue in particular toys with the idea of fiction and imprisonment. When Jeff finds himself in front of the beautiful and dangerous Kathie, he confesses he hasn’t talked to anyone in days, asking her to engage in conversation with him. He tells her, “if I don’t talk, I think. And it’s too late in life for me to start thinking.” Notice the suggestion that he is not being led—neither to Mexico nor anywhere—by choice, by his own thoughts. No, he only acts and talks according to an external force. He is chained within the constraints of this narrative, symbolizing the idea of fatalism within a narrative structure. But this cannot be an argument for fatalism’s presence in social, cultural, or metaphysical aspects of film noir. Instead, the film has fatalistic features that invade its metacinematic aspects in empirical agreement; in other words, the topic is metacinema, not metaphysics. He ends his speech by saying that in order to pass the time without talking to someone he could “go down to the cliff and look at the sea like a good tourist, but it is no good if there isn’t someone you can turn to and say, ‘nice view, huh?’” Of course he means the old cliché that life is not worth living alone, but also that there dialogue itself needs an audience! The concept of dialogue, an essential part of movies, is a symbol representing Out of the Past’s self-consciousness, its self-awareness as a work of fiction by reminding the audience of our symbiotic relationship with film and how decisive we are for the narrative structure.
Jeff’s narrative begins with him attempting to break away from his life as a private investigator, only to be pulled back by forces beyond his control. He is a character conscious of his place in a dark and deterministic narrative, and he resigns himself to this inevitability much like one would expect from a tragic hero. This resignation is woven into every shadowed alley, every murky barroom encounter, and every whispered exchange between characters like Jeff and Kathie or Whit. It's as though the characters are aware that their lives are being dictated by unseen hands — a director's vision, a writer's script — and they move within these confines, unable to alter their trajectory. When planning his escape with Kathie, he opens the door of his hotel room, and, to his surprise, finds a puzzled Whit Sterling. When he mentions that Whit is the last person in the world he expect to see, Whit says, “I hate surprises myself. You wanna just shut the door and forget it?” But Jeff simply tells him to come in. Notice how this scene breaks the forth wall: Whit reaches a point of almost coming out of character inquiring whether they had to perform the scene. For a second, the narrative is suspended and the audience is thrown off by the uncanny and sarcastic comment. It’s as if the characters came out of the screen, self-aware of their own participation in it as mere characters. This is further emphasized by Jeff’s decision that Whit should come in. He acknowledges both that the scene should continue and their powerlessness in front of the script and of the conventions of the genre. Not only they must continue the scene, but there is no possible world in which they could have stopped it or changed its course.
Out of the Past masterfully intertwines fatalism and metacinema to reveal the constrained reality of its characters. The film serves as a poignant commentary on the nature of genre and the limits it imposes on storytelling. Like a Greek tragedy, Out of the Past is a meditation on fate and inevitability, showing how characters are trapped by the very conventions that define them. The metacinematic elements — Jeff's awareness of his past, the inescapable allure of Kathie, and the oppressive atmosphere of places like San Francisco and Lake Tahoe — underscore this fatalism. In the world of film noir, the characters are not just part of a story; they are prisoners of it, bound by genre conventions that dictate their every move. Out of the Past is, ultimately, a film about stories that cannot end well because the genre demands it, leaving the audience with a haunting sense of inevitability that resonates long after the screen fades to black.
