Week 3 Double Indemnity -- Colin McGuire
Again, I thoroughly enjoyed last week’s movie, Double Indemnity. My favorite part was Walter’s excessive use of “baby” throughout the movie.
I would have to argue against the statement that film noir is not a genre. Film noir is defined by moods, lighting, and visual styles and is a category of film in its own that differs from other genres. I would agree that film noir crosses over a few boundaries of other genre’s by combining defining aspects of them, but is still its own genre. For instance, Double Indemnity could be classified under certain genres as drama or crime to name a couple. But the movie contains many aspects that define film noir. The constant use of shadows, dark and light contrasts, appropriate music, and femme fatal gives the movie a feel different from the norm horror or drama movie.
In lecture, a few terms used to describe film noir were an anti-hero, corruptness, and sexual innuendo. Double Indemnity contained all three of these. Walter, the main character appears to be coming to the rescue of Phyllis in the beginning of the movie to save her from her abusive and absent husband. Yet it turns out that Walter was being used and it turns more to the fact that he has just helped murder a girl’s father, not a husband. The next two terms, corruptness and sexual innuendo, describe Phyllis’ role in Double Indemnity. She takes an honest insurance salesman and uses her femme fatal characteristics to corrupt his sense of right and wrong. She flirts, seduces, and tells Walter she loves him to get her way and plan accomplished. She had an angelic face, but was sexually malicious. As Walter killed Mr. Dietrichson, she just starred straight ahead without emotion. In reference to Phyllis, Walter said, “No nerves, no tears, not even a blink of the eye.”
As said in lecture, this movie was a model for other movies and started a trend. I was not censored by the government at the point in time when media ws dominated with pictures of D-Day, FDR, and Hiroshima. Double indemnity was the “red meat” of the future movies of its genre.