Out of the past (1947) – the question of truth in Jacques Tourneur’s noir movie
- Institution: Uniwersytet Gdański
- Institution: Uniwersytet Gdański
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5154-7650
- Year of publication: 2019
- Source: Show
- Pages: 64-75
- DOI Address: https://doi.org/10.5604/cip201905
- PDF: cip/17/cip1705.pdf
Noir creators of the 1940s, like Jacques Tourneur, had a specific way of presenting worlds behind the silver screen. Their movies were visibly different than everything else Hollywood had to offer at that time. Marked by dark colors, inhabited by gritty, lost individuals, noir worlds seem hostile yet they also attract the audience in a perverse manner. Moreover, noir creators defy truth as it is. To discover it a person has to become an investigator, and study the noir movie like a murder case. Every element of the puzzle counts, as the film’s purpose is to deceive the audience. Analyzing both outside, mimetic tools of the filmmaker and inside, diegetic elements incorporated in a story-world is vital to understand how noir successfully plays with the idea of truth.