Double Indemnity - Jessica S.

The seedy look in this image seems to give the best example of film noir technique, because the first thing to notice about it is the “venetian-blind” lighting- the ‘prison bars trapping’ Walter Neff- which encompasses his mentality at this point in the film. He has already murdered Phyllis Dietrichson’s husband in order for them to be together- or so he thought up until this point- and he has gotten himself literally trapped within Dietrichson’s world, which brings up another aspect traditional to film noir, and that is the sultry and seductive nature of Barbara Stanwyck’s female lead role. I suppose you could type her as this film’s femme fatale, in that she inevitably led Fred MacMurray’s character into a dangerous situation, using her ‘helplessness and despair’ as an unhappy, lonely woman to trigger the character Neff into devising a plan to kill her husband. What makes her seem even more femme fatale-like is that she completely masks the fact that she doesn’t want her husband dead so that she can just simply be with Walter Neff, she only wants him dead because of all the money she can have because of the insurance policy’s double indemnity clause. This is carefully hidden from Neff throughout the film until he finds out what her real intentions were by talking to Dietrichson’s step-daughter. Phyllis Dietrichson’s seductive and sketchy ways ultimately traps Neff into a binding ‘clause’ of his own- he has the choice to either kill Phyllis or be killed and let her reap the benefits of her wrongdoings that he helped initiate.

With the mise en scene in this image, along with the “venetian-blind lighting”, the overall space enclosed by the frame leaves only one option for Neff to consider should he need to escape. The ‘prison bars’ of the lighting have enclosed him in to his right, but they have also projected onto the background part of the scene, leaving what seems like one tiny shadowed corner for him to go to, which would inevitably lead him toward Dietrichson-toward the danger that she represents. The expression on his face is stony and fixed, and his posture indicates that he is probably standing more rigidly and is more tense that he would have been had the couple’s situation not turned out to be a kill-or-be-killed situation.

In terms of the period of this noir film and thinking about the Production Code, I can see how not only the reputations of the characters playing ‘villains’ would be risky, but also the little things that makes film noir part of what it is. I watched a documentary recently about how films produced under the Code followed strict rules like “no kisses should be over three seconds long,” and how male and female characters smoking around one another was immediately indicative of sexual intent and innuendo. In addition to that, in terms of Phyllis Dietrichson’s infidelity, it seems as though the writers and the actors themselves had to be careful about how far they could take all of the restrictions. Sometimes it almost seems like they are mocking the restrictions of the Code by filling in the obvious situations that would get them in trouble with something more ambiguous and under the radar that makes it all seem appropriate when it really alludes to the opposite.