Double Indemnity (Journal for class)

Knowing little about Film Noir, I can hardly endeavor to do justice to the film in my analysis. The credits rolled with a shadowed person, back-lit, on crutches hobbling toward the camera while suspenseful, nearly sinister, music trolls in the background, creating immediate suspense.  Who is this man? Why is he on crutches? This was just the first of a multitude of the uses of light and dark, what the light reveals and what the dark obscures.

The first scene cloaks the identity of the protagonist for at least a full minute, keeping the audience at his back or in the physical darkness of the scene.  This figure, soon to be known as Walter, is limping ever so slightly, and it’s immediately apparent that he’s in some great pain.

So many scenes are shot in the dark, most notably, Phyllis’ house in the final murder scene. He’s asked her to turn on the lights, but she turns them off. It’s as if the characters are attempting to hide their wickedness from each other and themselves. The light exposes them too much. The dark is for doing dark deeds.

We see in several cases that a character walks up to a window. The windows let in light. So we get to see the character’s struggle more in these moments. It’s not only a physical window. It’s a window into the psyche of the character.

I thought it rather smart to use Walter as the narrator. So, not only do i get to see what happened in the past, I get to see his inner thoughts on the matter. It also paced the movie as we see him bleeding more and more as he dictates. When the blood has completely soaked through and he’s sweating profusely, we know that the action is coming to a head and a short close. We start the movie knowing how it’s going to end. He sums it up for us in the first sequence. He killed someone, he didn’t get the money, he didn’t get the girl, and he’s dying.

What i really enjoyed about Phyllis was that she manipulated the audience just as much as she manipulated Walter. Initially she’s just a woman, a cooped up (practically imprisoned) and slightly abused victim. Walter thinks he’s at the wheel the entire time, but she’s really the sole architect behind everything, using her sexuality and femininity to deceive. The audience gets to see her true colors before Walter puts the whole picture together. We only find out toward the end how wicked she truly is and how much she’s been playing Walter the entire time. I really enjoyed that Irony.

Throughout the film Walter’s been lighting Key’s cigars. I enjoyed that in the final scene, Keys lights Walter’s last cigarette.