In analyzing this film, you can look no further than the title in order to get the lens by which to view this story. Tourneur tells a story of a man, Jeff who’s settled with living a quiet life owning a gas station in a small town in Nevada. But what this sleepy town doesn’t know is that Jeff comes from the big city and has a major past that continues to follow him. The point is that everyone has a past, and in our attempt to become someone new like Jeff—who even changed his last name to Bailey—our past always comes to the surface, no matter how hard we try to hide it.
Jeff, though, has gotten to the point where he can no longer hide out. He has to face the truth because if he doesn’t he’s either going to be on the run or always looking over his shoulder. So, he goes back into his old life at the risk of his new, peaceful one. In so doing he pays with his life as the people who deals with are only concerned with their well-being, never anyone else's. This is a far cry from his life with Ann. It points to the fact that Jeff will never be out of the past that he created and Tourneur makes a poignant decision at the end of the film to kill Jeff. As the meaning is that one can never fully escape their past if they continue to run back into it in order to fix everything themselves. Sometimes the past must be dealt with, like Jeff’s situation with Whit. And other times it must be left alone, as in the relationship with Kathie who is volatile, selfish and only out for her own well-being.
