The Film Noir in Double Indemnity

Film Noir was a movement born from the disillusionment of post-war Americans. The term was coined by French critics who, after not having had access to American films since before World War II, were astonished by the “darkness” of post-war Hollywood cinema. Film noir did not provide the escape previous Hollywood films offered during the Great Depression, but instead confronted the audience with its characteristic anxiety-inducing style. The settings of these films were oppressively grim, where light came into rooms only through the slants of blinds over windows, or not at all, and shadows hovered over the faces of villains and heroes alike. The characters of film noir were predictable—the “proletariat tough-guy” contended by the “femme fatale”—each an embodiment of corruption, vice, and seedy morals (Benton ). Themes of sexual aberration and crime were woven into narratives that centered on murder and adultery. Presented in low-lighting and skewed angles, film noir was meant to psychologically disturb and disorient it viewers. The film, Double Indemnity, is a prime example of film noir in that it accomplishes the goal of film noir to unsettle its audience through its style, setting, characters, and themes.

Directed by Billy Wilder and released in 1944, Double Indemnity, was adapted from James M. Cain’s novella of the same name, a piece of American hard-boiled fiction. Fred MacMurry plays Walter Neff, an insurance salesman, and Barbara Stanwyck is Phyllis Dietrichson, the scheming wife. Edward G. Robinson is Barton Keyes, Neff’s boss, whose job it is to sniff out fraudulent claims. The opening scenes of the film set the tone—the silhouette of a man, hobbling on crutches, walks toward the audience, becoming larger on the screen; ...

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...nd, Neff ironically decides to trust her, providing the brute strength needed to carry out her female machinations. Phyllis is the dangerous dame, the spider woman who lures the hero into her web of lies. She is made a spectacle, as she meets Neff for the first time, wearing nothing but a towel; she is seen from above, at the top of the stairs, a pinnacle of femininity and beauty. However, she is not the fragile creature that she seems, and she uses her sexuality to manipulate Neff into killing her husband. Typical of the women of noir, Phyllis embodies the monstrous feminine, whose hyper-sexuality is a tool to destroy the nuclear family and to castrate the men she encounters. She dismantles the Dietrichsons from the inside, killing the mother to take her place, then her husband, and finally turns Zachetti against Lola, who is supposed to be like a daughter to her.