Double Indemnity - Bradley Strickland

Double Indemnity fits the profile of film noir. The image above is no exception and particularly highlights the essential aspect of darkness (both literally and figuratively).

This image shows Walter walking the streets late at night in order to have an alibi. The irony of the situation is that he has already done his deed for the night. The voice-over tells us something that we already know: that guilt is getting at him. He feels watched; he is being spied upon. The camera’s placement behind Walter allows the audience to be the detective that is on to him. We are the moral judges.

The low key lighting that creates the darkness of the image reinforces the wickedness of his deed. His twisted plot to use his walk to the pharmacy as a decoy shows just to what extreme Walter will go to serve the femme fatale. His placement suggests that Walter himself is walking with the shadow. This illusion that only half of the man is visible – the rest of him is in darkness – shows that he has been taken over, seduced by the dark, the femme fatale. This scene no longer shows us Walter, a man’s man; it shows us a shell possessed by lust. The idea that he is being possessed clouds the moral ambiguity and intensifies the power of Phyllis.

Though they claim to be on a trolley car together, it is ironic that he is on this murky path alone. The disappearance of the sidewalk into darkness, metaphorically into moral ambiguity, tells us that there are no street lights, no happy ending to this story.