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Double Indemnity: 1944 Directed by Billy Wilder
A salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co. Walter Neff meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they start an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the prize of an accident insurance policy and Walter plots a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead the police accept the evidence of an accidental death. But the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the version and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man, not suspecting Walter. Its a cynical, witty, and sleazy thriller about adultery, corruption and murder all usual characteristics of a film noir. Written by Claudio Carvalho

Sunset Boulevard : 1950 Directed by Billy Wilder
Attempting to elude creditors, down-on-his-luck Hollywood scriptwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) pulls into the driveway of the ramshackle mansion of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard. Norma is a former matinee star from the silent film era and is now a recluse at the house where she lives with Max her all-around attendant. Norma hires Joe to write a screenplay from a stack of handwritten pages she has scratched out for a film of Salomé which she has written to get her return to the screen. Joe takes on the assignment because he needs the money to pay his creditors, but when Max moves all of Joe's possessions into the house on Sunset Boulevard he begins to feel trapped. Needing to finish the script but needing friendship Joe leaves one night to visit his friend Artie Green where he accidentally bumps into studio reader Betty Schaefer. Betty and Joe are attracted to each other immediately but Joe runs back to Norma due in part to his warped sense of loyalty to the older actress. When Joe falls in love with Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end. Sunset Boulevard is notable for the atmospheric film noir cinematography of John F. Seitz. Written by Claudio Carvalho

The Maltese Falcon: 1941 Directed by John Huston
Spade and Archer is the name of a San Francisco detective agency. That's for Sam Spade and Miles Archer. The two men are partners, but Sam doesn't like Miles much. Miss Wanderly, walks into their office, and by that night everything's changed. Miles is dead. And so is a man named Floyd Thursby. It seems Miss Wanderly is surrounded by dangerous men. There's Joel Cairo, who uses gardenia-scented calling cards. There's Kasper Gutman, with his enormous girth and feigned civility. Her only hope of protection comes from Sam, who is suspected by the police of one or the other murder. More murders are yet to come, and it will all be because of these dangerous men and their lust for a statuette of a bird: the Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade is a partner in a private-eye firm who finds himself hounded by police when his partner is killed whilst tailing a man. The girl who asked him to follow the man turns out not to be who she says she is, and is really involved in something to do with the 'Maltese Falcon', a gold-encrusted life-sized statue of a falcon, the only one of its kind. Written by J. Spurlin. There are extensive uses of sexually suggestive situations in this picture, typical of its genre

Film Noir Research

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir's main characteristics of cinematography and lighting styles are a low key black and white visuals that have roots in German expressionist cinematography.

The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia. These reflected the mind sets of the pessimistic people of the time as Communism and McCarthyism threataned the American way of life.

Heroes (or anti-heroes) are flawed or corrupt characters, they were down-and-out, conflicted hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, a lone wolf, socio-paths or killers, crooks, war veterans, politicians, petty criminals and murderers. The protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld, they were cynical, brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive usually losing in the end.

The femme fatale would play a crucial role in the film noir, whether in the guise of Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street, Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. These women were black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices. The femme fatale knew how to use men to get whatever she wanted, whether it was just a little murder between lovers (as in Double Indemnity) or a wild, on-the-run lifestyle ( Gun Crazy). The femme fatale was always there to help pull the hero down. This representation of women was characteristic of the times of the early 20th century when traditional masculinity was threatened by previously oppressed females taking men's roles in life as bread winners, go-getters and ambition chasers. In the 1930s, women with such characteristics were seen as dangerous and script writers and directors took advantage of the stereotype and gave the world some leading ladies you wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally.

Narratives were complex and maze-like, and always told with foreboding background music, short flashbacks, sharp dialogue and often included confessional first-person voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the hero was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed or made one wrong decision. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life.

Expressionistic lighting, deep-focus or depth of field camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing ominous shadows, skewed camera angles ( the Dutch angle) cigarette smoke and unbalanced or moody compositions were all essential to a film noir picture and defined the genre. Settings were often interiors with low-key (or single-source) lighting, venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting.

Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit and low-rent
apartments and hotel rooms of big cities. Dark rooms with light slicing through venetian blinds, alleys cluttered with garbage, abandoned warehouses where dust hangs in the air, rain-slickened streets with water still running in the gutters, dark detective offices overlooking busy streets, such setting were uncomfortably realistic and it made the action and story all the more believable.

Film noir can be mixed with almost any other genre, usually from the crime and detective genres, but often joining with thrillers, horror, and even science fiction. The visual style of German expressionism, painting shafts of light and low key lighting can be applied to any situation where discomfort, paranoia and threat need to be emphasized.

While Hollywood tried to public morale high, film noir gave us a peek into the alleys and backrooms of a world filled with corruption. And film noir remained an important form in Hollywood until the late '50s, by then, the crime and detective genres were playing out their dramas in bright lights, with movies such as The Lineup containing noir elements but not the same that noir first appeared in the early '40s. While soldiers went to war, film noir exposed a darker side of life, balancing the optimism of Hollywood musicals and comedies by supplying seedy, two-bit criminals and doom-laden atmospheres.

double indemnity analysis

Representations :
Phyllis Dietrichson: (first impression) blond beauty, stylish, long suffering wife, slightly abused, introduced into story half naked, drinks ice tea, is in love with Walter.
(last impression) femme fétal, manipulative, probably murdered before, unkind to Lola her step daughter, unloving, liar, uses Walter.
Lola Dietrichson: innocent, young, brunette, step daughter, unhappy, secretly dating Nino who her father disapproves of, shown to be crying quite often, mother dead.
Mr Dietrichson: Sleazy, ugly, old in his 50s, sometimes abusive, neglectful to family, drunk borderline alcoholic, does not inspire sympathy from audience, fat, works at an oil field.
Walter Neff: Slick salesman, tall and handsome, successful, talks in fast short sentences, calls Phyllis “baby”, confident, prefers a beer, very masculine, smokes a cigarette, single.
Mr Keyes: short, intelligent, good instincts his “little man”, smokes cheap cigars, Walter’s friend and employer, single though almost married a girl till the “little man” told him to check her background, never seen wearing a jacket or blazer like the other insurance people, a good heart under a hard exterior.

Audience: The audience respond to the characters and situations depending on how they are represented. We as the audience watching the story unfold have ideas put in our heads through out the picture and the people inside it, we have little sympathy for Mr Dietrichson when he is murdered because we don’t like him as we briefly get to know him through witnessing his behaviour ourselves and hearing about his habits from his wife. The audience’s response to Phyllis Dietrichson changes as the plot progresses, at first we strongly sympathise with this beautiful long suffering wife and almost find ourselves egging her on to get rid of her abusive husband, but as we get to know her and hear about what her step daughter has to say about her and we grow suspicious and realise we’ve fallen for it just like Walter.
Industry: director Billy Wilder’s directorial choices in this film reflected his belief in the primacy of writing, he avoided the exuberant cinematography and shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Double Indemnity is a typical Claudio Carvalho script and story, full of dark tricks and deception with an unhappy ending. Billy Wilder is in his element in working on such a story and double indemnity was one of his most well-known and celebrated works.

Language: what each character is saying and how they say it has a profound effect on the story and the audience, the movie’s catchphrase “it was murder at first sight” uses the popular saying “love at first sight” so we understand that this is a romantic story with a dark twist. For the most part the tone of all the characters is casual that is only moderated when Walter and Keyes meet an executive of the company. Walter Neff’s language is simplistic, short and to the point, very similar to Keyes’s style. Phyllis talks with a smooth breathy tone almost all the time when she’s with Walter but switches to sounding professional and in charge during more formal scenes with undertones of seduction.

Narrative: Walter Neff provides the narration throughout the picture, starting from the first scene as he confesses to the crime in Keyes’s office and during significant moments in the film when its appropriate to know what he was thinking at the time. If Walter had not been narrating in key moments of the film the story would have been harder to follow as it provided a lot of insight to where the plot was going, we could not have known certain things like when Walter was driving away from his first meeting with Phyllis, he described the smell of honeysuckle as he travels down the drive, “I didn’t know then…that murder could smell like honeysuckle” the voice over

Genre: As a film noir picture the film must meet a certain criteria; dark deeds, devious motives, black widows, crooked characters and death. Double Indemnity is a quality film noir classic as it provides all the shady twists, flawed characters and murderous plots that noir demands.