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<\/p>\nPaper by Lauren Sousa. All films available on DVD.<\/p>\n
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Any treatise, by any author, about film noir is by its nature reductive. A notoriously slippery group of films, noirs can be difficult to identify, and not everyone agrees on their definition. They were not all made after World War II, they were certainly not all made before the war, and they do not feature any specific set of characteristics. Is\u00a0Casablanca<\/i>(Michael Curtiz 1942), for example, which borrows the classic prison-bar-like shadows from, perhaps, John Huston\u2019s proto-noir\u00a0The Maltese Falcon<\/i>,\u00a0<\/i>from the year before, a noir film? What about\u00a0The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari\u00a0<\/i>(Robert Wiene 1920), a German Expressionist film widely held as an inspiration for noir? Does one require a detective? Does it need a femme fatale or a murder? To answer any of these questions would be to express a personal opinion and reduce film noir to a checklist, something the darkly beautiful and under-appreciated film group does not need. It\u2019s arguable that Billy Wilder, an Austrian-American director who took to his new home and won six Academy Awards, made far more than two films noirs. It\u2019s equally subjective that his films\u2019 most interesting characters are their men, who both provide stark contrast to two common male noir archetypes. However, of all the characteristics that differentiate Wilder\u2019s noir, Joe Gillis (William Holden) of\u00a0Sunset Boulevard\u00a0<\/i>and especially Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) of\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>\u00a0definitely and uniquely demonstrate a specific American fear of the skilled ordinary man with the drive, determination, and intelligence to hide behind his normal exterior an extraordinary propensity to exploit innocents in front of their very eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n Depending on the definer, film noir can constitute an aesthetic chiefly marked by low key lighting, Dutch angles, black and white cinematography or the spirit thereof, claustrophobic closed framing, and an interesting lighting effect in which Venetian blinds, lit from the outside, appear to create prison bars in shadows (Lewis 178), or a thematically rich genre involving plot elements such as voiceover narration, most usually some violent crime, and a crucial dichotomy between a manipulative woman willing to commit sometimes heinous crimes, including murder, to get what she wants, called a femme fatale (Muller), and a \u201cgood girl,\u201d a \u201cgirl next door type\u201d (Harvey 41) who James Harvey calls \u201cthe available (and distinctly advisable) alternative to the noir heroine, to the woman we and the hero are really interested in\u201d (29). Springing up during World War II, film noir importantly a genre of patterns, one which was first noted by Nino Frank, a French critic watching American exports, after World War II, in his 1946 essay \u201cA New Kind of Police Drama: The Criminal Adventure.\u201d Reviewing films from 1941 to 1944 and focusing especially on crime films critics at the time referred to as \u201c[melodramas]\u201d (Crowther), Frank identifies four films specifically as \u201cnoir:\u201d\u00a0The Maltese Falcon<\/i>,\u00a0Laura\u00a0<\/i>(Otto Preminger 1944),\u00a0Murder, My Sweet\u00a0<\/i>(Edward Dmytryk 1944), and\u00a0Double Indemnity\u00a0<\/i>(Billy Wilder 1944). These films, he notes, are lean, exciting, and prioritize the psychology of the protagonist over the solving of a mystery while stylistically emphasizing small character gestures and employing realist camera work in contrast to the \u201cpretentious flourishes\u201d (19) of such traditional prestige pictures as\u00a0How Green Was My Valley\u00a0<\/i>(John Ford 1947). Frank notes both aesthetic and thematic elements of noir; here, the guiding principle is that films noirs deal with the anxiety, especially in the light of World War II, that ordinary individuals are not immune to committing inhumanity.<\/span><\/p>\n Double Indemnity\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/i>\u00a0are distinguished from their counterparts\u00a0Detour<\/i>\u00a0(Edgar G. Ulmer), \u201cthe prototype postwar noir\u201d (Lewis 180) and\u00a0Out of the Past\u00a0<\/i>(Jacques Tourneur 1947), which James Harvey calls \u201cthe richest and most lyrical of\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0the postwar noir films\u201d (14), in several ways that reveal their different thematic focuses. Each of these films prominently features a femme fatale, while Wilder\u2019s women are older and far more knowing than those of Tourneur or Ulmer, searching always for their \u201creturn,\u201d as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) insists on calling it in\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/i>, to some past, wonderful time. Indeed, Jane Greer\u2019s Kathie Moffat in\u00a0Out of the Past\u00a0<\/i>suggests only at the end of the film that there has ever been anything in her life to which she would want to return, the idyll in Mexico that she and private eye Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) shared at the beginning of it. In the film\u2019s first half, however, she seems determined only to get away from her abusive boyfriend Whit (Kirk Douglas) with plenty of money to make herself comfortable than to return to any previously desirable state. Perhaps it is her age, just twenty-three at the date of release (\u201cJane\u201d) that left her no place to go back, but more likely, it seems that it is the character of her past, not its length, that makes it something \u201cworth losing,\u201d as Jeff once says of the other female character in that film, Meta Carson (Rhonda Fleming). Unlike Kathie, she seems perfectly happy with her life as a tax lawyer\u2019s secretary, but even she will have to find a new life when he turns up dead.<\/span><\/p>\n In contrast to these forward-looking women, those in\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>, even young, innocent Lola Dietrichson (Jean Heather) longs for a time before her stepmother had killed both of her parents. The older, more cynical Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) also seeks a return to form in spirit if not precise details. When she whines, in an early rationalization of her marriage to Mr. Dietrichson, that \u201cI wanted a home,\u201d Phyllis shows both her bitterness at the present and, like Kathie and Vera (Ann Savage) of\u00a0Detour<\/i>, the greed that motivated her to kill the first Mrs. Dietrichson. Unlike in\u00a0Out of the Past<\/i>, the fragments of her unmarried life as a nurse are never dramatized, only discussed, but despite the domestic trappings it may have lacked, she had at the time an agency that she feels is missing from her married life. She could, at that time, do anything she wanted, including leave, kill, and entrap herself an unhappy prison with all the \u201cluxury and security\u201d (Smith) that an unhappy marriage to an oil man entails. Getting out of this \u201ccage\u201d (Smith) by killing her husband is risky, but a success would give her a tantalizing hybrid of the trappings of wealth and financial independence that younger femmes fatales seek as well as elements of a revered past.<\/span><\/p>\n While Phyllis looks both forward and back in planning her life after crime, Norma dooms herself by refusing to acknowledge the future. Her steadfast belief that the days of silent film will continue for her has prevented her from adapting; shut in her Sunset Boulevard mansion, the former star ignores any signal that her creative medium may no longer be relevant and instead idolizes the days of the past and their imminent \u201creturn.\u201d Ultimately, her tragic ending is caused by her mere jealousy of Betty (Nancy Olson), who represents for her the younger, less worthy generation stealing from her her fame and, in Betty\u2019s case, her man and the screenwriting skills that she believes will eventually lead to that return. This contrasts with both Kathie and Vera, who are, once again, too young to have much more to which to return than packing bags for Mexico or thumbing a ride in Louisiana.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, the female characters in Billy Wilder\u2019s films noirs spend the plot of the film searching for a lost paradise in sharp contrast to the female characters of other films noirs, who search with as much determination but less specific direction because they have to find such a situation. While his female characters were complex, however, the most intriguing element of Wilder\u2019s noirs are his male protagonists, who use their innocent professional skills and intimate knowledge of the workings of the minds of their femmes fatales and those who might prevent their deception and criminal behavior for personal gain to nearly pull off these crimes before telling the audience their stories, demonstrating an anxiety, especially in the face of the war, that someone as ordinary as Joe Gillis or Walter Neff could do so much harm with so little detection.<\/span><\/p>\n It seems audiences might identify more with Joe\u00a0Gillis, whose main skill as a screenwriter involves storytelling, a skill which could be learned democratically by, for example, watching movies like\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/i>. Also, his chief crimes are evading the police who try to repossess his car and manipulating Norma Desmond to care for him financially for re-writing her script to\u00a0Salom\u00e9<\/i>, which he never believes will be successful and ultimately is not. While Joe is, by all accounts, an ordinary man, he is frightening to a postwar audience because he uses the simple skills he has to his advantage, telling his patron stories not only of her impending \u201creturn\u201d to fame after the script is finished but of adoring fans that he knows do not exist. Even worse, he feels only a little shame at his manipulation, which is demonstrated occasionally, such as when he refuses to purchase the more expensive vicuna coat with Norma\u2019s money because it, like his lack of car, shows the many ways that he has given up his agency for a life that, while perhaps less independent or private, has far more of the trappings of wealth than his old unit at the Alto Nido apartment house. It becomes clear just how maliciously he uses those skills when Joe is compared to Al Roberts from\u00a0Detour<\/i>. Like Joe, Roberts works in the entertainment industry and harbors dreams of making it big. However, unlike his counterpart in\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/i>, Roberts\u2019 sole other aspiration, to marry his girlfriend Sue, seems far friendlier and more normal than Joe\u2019s desire to avoid the police and quick and cunning acceptance of a paid position that provides him protection therefrom. Meanwhile, while Joe\u2019s fate is worse than Roberts\u2019, the latter never explicitly desired to commit a crime, and the only time he does, under duress from Vera, he stands to make no money from it. Further, he protests vigorously against impersonating Haskell to obtain even more money; even though his protestations are practical, worrying about such matters as \u201cwhether [I would know if] I had an Aunt Emma or not.\u201d Ultimately, though, his brief compliance in the plot is motivated more by Vera\u2019s blackmail and his desire to see Sue again than any hope of personal gain. Although Roberts is cynical and unhappy, even misanthropic, he never deliberately tries to hurt another person, and repeatedly, as when he calls her in Los Angeles and hangs up, tries to protect Sue, the one person for whom he confesses any affection. Even though he takes Haskell\u2019s \u201croll\u201d of cash and his car, the man confesses to having no family, and Roberts largely wants nothing to do with either item and plans to get rid of the car at his earliest convenience before he picks up Vera. Because the nature of his crimes, which are either accidental or victimless, Al Roberts reveals in its creators different anxieties, largely on the topic of fate, which differs from\u00a0Sunset Boulevard<\/i>\u2019s thematic subject matter of criminality in the ordinary man.<\/span><\/p>\n It is a mere lack of success \u2013 something that could happen to any aspiring screenwriter like Joe \u2013 that leads him to the financial pickle inspiring behavior that a viewer might find not only criminal but immoral. Joe Gillis happily, even smugly pulls into a seemingly abandoned driveway to evade the law, and when he finds an opportunity to make money even though he has no hope for the project on which he agrees to work, favoring money over agency every time; even after New Year\u2019s, when he no longer enjoys their arrangement, he continues with it because Norma financially provides for him. Finally, though, his indiscretions are somewhat minor; he mostly builds a web of lies that, upon its shattering, leads to his death. Despite the fact that some of his actions may make viewers uncomfortable at his potentially depraved use of a democratically-gained skill, Joe\u2019s crimes are quite mild when compared to\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>\u2019s Walter Neff, who uses his intimate and specialized knowledge of the insurance business to nearly commit a perfect crime involving fraud and murder.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s clear from the beginning that Walter is up to no good; whether he is motivated by lust, as film critic John Gregory Dunne believes (qtd. in Phillips 59) or by greed combined with his confidence in his ability to benefit immensely, both financially and sexually, from his very specific but quotidian expertise as a claims adjuster at the Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company, expressed when, in his dying monologue used as voiceover throughout the film, Walter states that, \u201cI did for the money…and for a woman…and [I] could…[commit fraud] and do it smart.\u201d In this way, aware not only of his understanding of the business but of his potential sordid use for it, the character finds his counterpart in another male noir staple, the private investigator.<\/span><\/p>\n Frank writes of that archetype that \u201cthe private detective…has nothing to do with bureaucratic function but, by definition…[is] on the fringe of the law\u201d (16). Because the character is not considered a true part of a moral, functioning society, when a private eye such as\u00a0Out of the Past<\/i>\u2019s Jeff Bailey lies in telegrams to his boss, Whit, who is, as a gambler, already far enough from a moral center that might condemn Joe Gillis for his financial dependence to forgive any moral expectations, it is expected, even exhilarating to watch. Unlike Walter, with his typical career at an ordinary agency of which there might be one or more prominently advertized in any city or town and with whom most members of the audience probably have a policy of, if not accident insurance, car or life insurance, most ordinary Americans would never come in contact with someone like Jeff or the man he works for. Further, both\u00a0Out of the Past\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Double Indemnity\u00a0<\/i>feature a character who fits in the \u201cgood girl\u201d archetype, but that character in the former film, Jeff\u2019s fianc\u00e9e Ann Miller (Virginia Huston), is never ultimately harmed by the criminal machinations of the people with whom she comes in contact; she is kept in \u201ca separate compartment of the movie…quite apart from that woman in the city or the nightclub or the\u00a0other\u00a0<\/i>guy\u2019s home\u201d (Harvey 29), and when every major character in the film (besides Meta) dies, she stays safe and even relatively unaffected; as the agent for ordinary Americana, the character with whom the audience of that film would be most likely to identify, she is not materially disturbed. Indeed, she goes off with the sheriff, her childhood sweetheart, in the same scene she learns that Jeff is gone, allowing her to give up her last ties to a world to which she never belonged.\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>, however, refuses to coddle\u00a0its\u00a0<\/i>\u201cgood girl.\u201d Lola loses both her parents to the ordinary people she should be able to trust and is prevented from telling the truth by the very agent of justice, the agent who sold the insurance, in whom she should be able to confide. She is not kept in any such \u201ccompartment,\u201d and if she, like Ann and Betty before her, stands in for the ordinary American viewer, she demonstrates to them exactly how convincing such an ordinary, selfish, malicious skilled man can be.<\/span><\/p>\n Certainly, it takes two, in this case, to commit the crime; without Phyllis, Walter would have had no opportunity to kill for profit, but as he says in one of the most famous parts of his Dictaphone monologue, \u201cYou\u2019re like that guy behind the roulette wheel, watching the customers to make sure they don\u2019t crook the house. And then one night you get to thinking how…you\u2019ve got the wheel right under your hands…All you need is a plant out front, a shill to put down the bet.\u201d This quote demonstrates that while meeting Phyllis, who presented reasons to kill her husband, including his drunken violence, that may or may not be true, provided him the catalytic opportunity to \u201ccrook the house,\u201d she did not put the idea in his head. It had been on his mind for who knows how long, and he might have done it with anyone; while Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers) might have been foolish to trust his wife, it is Walter who carries out every step against him, finding the faulty insurance papers, killing him, and then faking his death: an unknown man who finds in his victim\u2019s wife attractive, but also an opportunity and all the skills necessary the carrying out of his criminal greedy plans nearly undetected.<\/span><\/p>\n Even worse than his previous thoughts about committing his crimes and possibly even worse than committing them, Walter manages to hide them from the insurance agency, including, crucially, the head claims adjuster, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), who is shown in several scenes, including in his introduction, when he refuses to process the claim of a man who tried to commit insurance fraud by burning out his truck, as quite a crackerjack, with a bizarre theory about a \u201clittle man\u201d who personifies his conscience and helps him solve his cases. In his scenes, after consulting many \u201cactuarial tables\u201d Keyes slowly figures out that the Dietrichson case involved murder, Phyllis, and a partner. Trying to prove his point, he brings in the only person who saw Walter dressed as and claiming to be Dietrichson, a Mr. Jackson (Porter Hall) from Medford, Oregon, but although he confirms the man on the train was not the man who died, he fails to recognize Walter, dismissing his familiarity as owing to the fact that \u201cthere\u2019s a family of Neffs in Corvallis.\u201d Late in the film, Walter learns from Keyes\u2019 Dictaphone of the suspicion against him as Phyllis\u2019s in crime, only to have it dispelled moments later by the man who should have been his biggest opponent in getting away with the crime \u201cpersonally [vouching] for him without reservation.\u201d Of course, in the end, Keyes is right that when two people commit a murder together, \u201cthe last stop is the cemetery,\u201d but that still does not happen before Walter takes his last hours to explain into his Dictaphone the whole story from his own perspective for the audience and the man who should have found him out, \u201cOnly the guy you were looking for was too close — he was right across the desk from you.\u201d That \u201ceach [flashback], the bloodstain on Walter\u2019s suit coat is larger\u201d (Phillips 64) means that the audience cannot help feeling some sympathy for the dying man, even as his ingratiation in an essential part of many Americans\u2019 lives means he is able to commit crimes that ruin a few of them and inspire anxiety in other people just like him who fear other benignly skilled men who could do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n Walter and Phyllis set up a standing meeting at a local supermarket to discuss their impending crime; the two times they meet are of the most anxious scenes in the movie, in part because the viewer worries whether the other shoppers, such as a woman for whom Walter takes baby food off a shelf, will find out about their plans and in part because it is frightening to consider that such a horrible subject might be discussed in such day-to-day surroundings. Far more interesting to watch than this scene, however, partially takes place in the same setting: it is the one following their first grocery store rendezvous, a week later in the film\u2019s chronology, in which Keyes offers Walter a promotion and Walter and Phyllis talk on the phone with him in the room.<\/span><\/p>\n The purpose of the scene in the plot is to set up the murder more concretely for the audience, which it does successfully through voiceover and Walter and Phyllis\u2019s phone conversation. The scene is not so simple as that, though; the character business it features is even more impressive, and its densely-packed ironies are very entertaining in light of the rest of the film.<\/span><\/p>\n The scene begins with a long take, a shot of over two minutes over Walter\u2019s shoulder. As the violin score becomes more hurried and staccato, fading into the background, he updates the chronology in voiceover while the image shows him opening envelopes, emphasizing that June 15th<\/sup>, the date of the scene, is not much different from any other day at Pacific All-Risk, except that he is trying to \u201ckeep [his] mind off [Phyllis]\u201d as Barton Keyes walks in. The low-key lighting, film grain, and a fly incidentally buzzing demonstrate the realism that Billy Wilder consciously included in his film to, in his own words, \u201cmatch the kind of story we were telling\u201d (qtd. in Phillips 62) and show just how run-of-the-mill, even slightly amoral, are the settings in which this scene and the film as a whole are shot. The claims man\u2019s unannounced arrival underscores that this setting, like the market, is a public place; it is now, too, that the two other names on Walter\u2019s office door come into focus. As Keyes\u2019 proposal that Walter become his assistant becomes more serious, he walks forward in the room, growing in size, relevance, and threatening presence in an attempt to convince Walter to become his assistant at a lower salary. Significantly, in this part of the scene, Keyes\u2019 is the only face the viewer sees head-on, which allows him to dominate the scene without being upstaged; therefore, it is his impassioned emotions that carry the first shot, foreshadowing the enthusiasm that he will muster to consider the Dietrichson case. His climax of ardor comes when he exclaims, with his back turned, that the forms he reads on a daily basis are \u201cpacked with drama,\u201d when Phyllis calls on the phone, interrupting him before he finishes the soliloquy by listing the roles he must take on as head of claims: \u201ca doctor and a bloodhound and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor, all in one.\u201d As close to Walter as Keyes gets, even as close as to sit on his desk, he never gets quite as large in the frame, and his square-standing posture never competes for dominance with Walter\u2019s often idle but always diagonal presence in the frame. In this way, Walter visually asserts the dominance he will have over Keyes for the rest of the film; no matter how fervid his investigation, Walter\u2019s quiet, simple stance will overpower Keyes; he literally will die before he is found guilty.<\/span><\/p>\n The scene begins to actively cause anxiety when Walter takes the phone from Keyes. Of course, from the voiceover and the viewer\u2019s knowledge of Walter\u2019s life, it is no surprise that the woman on the phone is Phyllis Dietrichson, but while the questions on the viewer\u2019s mind are similar to those that occupy them during the preceding scene, the situation is far more serious: if anyone could do them in, it is Keyes. Further, the scene\u2019s placement, roughly one-third into the film, means the audience has had time to gather sympathy for Walter and Phyllis. When Walter turns around and the viewer sees his face for the first time in the scene, his unsure and obviously unpracticed lying \u2013 calling Phyllis \u201cMargie\u201d with a sick look on his face \u2013 increases the dramatic tension even before the scene reaches its point: they will commit the murder tonight. Walter switches the side on which he is holding the phone, notably turning away from Keyes and towards the viewer, as this bit of information is revealed. The publicity of both settings becomes clear before it is addressed onscreen: Phyllis, in the phone booth at the supermarket, turns her head away from the stockboy, the only person apparently in the store, but as she mentions that her husband has broken his leg, several shoppers walk by; in the next shot, Walter specifically asks Keyes for privacy, a request that he denies. With Walter always larger in the frame during the phone conversation, the composition reinforces the fact that he is in control; Keyes will not find out, at least from this side of the phone call, what is going on. Even the cryptic line, \u201cWhat color did you pick?\u201d referring to the suit Mr. Dietrichson will wear, does not rouse his curiosity. Also worth noting is Stanwyck\u2019s acting during her last shot in the scene. After a somewhat nervous performance in the rest of the scene, in which she includes details Walter apparently never thought to ask, she suddenly becomes excited, almost rapturous, as if she was going to a party or on vacation instead of planning a murder. That she might be happy, if nervous, in this scene is a little unsettling; when convincing Walter to commit the murder, she emphasized how dismayed she was to be married to her husband and what they would do with the money, but never suggesting she would feel glee at the great misfortune she was to cause. Therefore, for the first time, Phyllis reveals her true colors in this shot before the film\u2019s focus returns to Walter.<\/span><\/p>\n After the phone conversation, the shot changes; the camera moves in front of Walter\u2019s desk instead of behind it. The frame in this case is far more balanced, relieving some of the compositional anxiety that was present for more than half of the scene. Ironically, the conversation turns not just to the fictional \u201cMargie\u201d but a woman that Keyes nearly married until he found out too much about her storied past. His suspicion of \u201cMargie,\u201d who is really Phyllis and who he believes \u201cdrinks from the bottle,\u201d indicating that she has no class, is ironic in light of the fact that it takes him so little time to determine her plot. His belief that there are better things for Walter, shown when he asks \u201cwhy don\u2019t you settle down and get married?\u201d also foreshadowing his blindness to his friend\u2019s complicity with Phyllis. The next shot, just before Keyes leaves the room, also features foreshadowing. Admitting that he thought Walter \u201ca shade less dumb than the rest,\u201d he comes to the conclusion, in light of the younger man\u2019s refusal of a new job, that he is \u201cjust a little taller,\u201d suggesting, in almost absolute terms, what he will discover by the film\u2019s end; before he walks out, Walter lights Keyes\u2019 cigar, a moment that is reversed in the finale.<\/span><\/p>\n After Keyes leaves, the shot changes once again, to a wide shot facing the door directly. The small objects in the room and on the desk become clear, clouding the composition and suggesting, along with the voiceover and anxious, rising score, Walter\u2019s emotions and fear. He leaves his rate book in the office as part of his alibi and goes home \u2013 apparently at three in the afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n The setting is ordinary; the characters are ordinary, even the types of people an everyday American would know.\u00a0Sunset Boulevard\u00a0<\/i>scratches the surface of the idea that a normal man could be, behind his charming fa\u00e7ade, a skilled trickster.\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>, in spite of its earlier release, elaborates on the idea that in a public realm, though he may come close, the cunning, capable individual shown in the scene analyzed will not be discovered because of his simple, trustworthy appearance and personality and his ability to hide, sometimes very nearly in plain sight, what is going on. Though the film takes place in mid-1938, before the war began, it is easy to see how, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Americans would be frightened by the injustice committed seemingly right under their noses. After the war, James Harvey notes that Americans worried about \u201chysteria and fear in the girl next door and…criminality in the respectable working girl\u201d that Hitchcock featured in such films as\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Psycho\u00a0<\/i>(85), meaning that these messages have had resonance in various eras, including today; they tap into the basic fear that we may not be able to trust what we do, which spans beyond cultural events.<\/span><\/p>\n Film noir ultimately affected Hollywood pictures as much as it reflected American fears of darkness in the everyman. The James M. Cain novelette that serves as the source material for\u00a0Double Indemnity\u00a0<\/i>was initially considered far too risqu\u00e9 for a film for general audiences, but after it was toned down, the picture was approved (Phillips 55), marking it as one of many genres that dealt heavily with industry censorship. Noir, however, managed to work mostly on innuendo, such as Phyllis and Walter\u2019s conversation early in the film including the classic line, \u201cThere\u2019s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff: forty-five miles an hour,\u201d and off-screen violence, such as the classic close-up of Phyllis staring stone-faced ahead while her husband is killed a mere few feet away. Perhaps, though, something more important than Wilder\u2019s clever use of implication still reverberates in the entertainment of today. In Joe Gillis and to a much greater extent Walter Neff, Wilder helped to gain acceptance for the antihero, an ordinary protagonist who fails to fill the shoes of a more epic individual, one who might do bad things for good or for selfish ends. The character can be seen in endless neo-noirs, such as the Coen Brothers\u2019\u00a0The Man Who Wasn\u2019t There<\/i>(2001), and, more recently, on television: Jeff Jansen of Entertainment Weekly isn\u2019t alone in comparing\u00a0Breaking Bad\u00a0<\/i>to the type of film once noted as \u201ctough melodramas\u201d (Crowther) and\u00a0its\u00a0<\/i>antihero, another Walter, is also a completely normal, professional man, one who even works with children before he turns to a life of crime.<\/span><\/p>\n Film noir was not a genre created self-consciously, but it is nevertheless doubtless that the group of films now thus defined has changed the definition of what is acceptable material in a film and just how similar a protagonist can be to the idealized viewer. The noirs of Billy Wilder raise questions about normalcy, alienation, sanity, and greed; sometimes, they are answered. More often, though,\u00a0Sunset Boulevard\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Double Indemnity<\/i>, like any other films, show a viewer themselves through the mirror that is their personal reactions. The work of this misanthropic director in a notably misanthropic genre means that they, and we, might not always enjoy what that mirror displays, but it is nonetheless worth questioning, that we might discover more about the characters who live out the struggles that define us in the context of a genre, an era, and a world.<\/span><\/p>\n Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n Crowther, Bosley. \u201cDouble Indemnity: A Tough Melodrama, With Stanwyck and MacMurray as<\/span><\/p>\n Killers, Opens at the Paramount.\u201d New York Times 7 Sep 1944. Print.<\/span>tour<\/i>. Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer. Perf. Tom Neal and Ann Savage. Producers Releasing Corporat<\/span>. DVD.<\/span><\/p>\n Double Indemnity<\/i>. Dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G.<\/span><\/p>\n Robinson. Paramount. 1944. DVD.<\/span><\/p>\n Frank, Nino. \u201cA New Kind of Police Drama: The Criminal Adventure.\u201d Trans. Alain Silver. L\u2019\u00e9cran<\/span><\/p>\n Fran\u00e7ais Aug 1946. Rpt. In\u00a0Film Noir Reader II<\/i>. Ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New<\/span><\/p>\n York: Limelight Editions, 2004. 15-21. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n Harvey, James.\u00a0Movie Love in the Fifties<\/i>. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cJane Greer.\u201d TCM. Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc, n.d. Web. 8 Nov 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n Jensen, Jeff. \u201cEssay: How \u2018Breaking Bad\u2019 Cheated Its Way to a Grandly Cynical Finale.\u201d EW.com.<\/span><\/p>\n Entertainment Weekly, 30 Sept. 2013. Web. 13 November 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n Lewis, Jon.\u00a0American Film: A History<\/i>. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n Muller, Eddie. \u201cFilm Noir.\u201d Greencine. All Media Guide LLC, n.d. Web. 10 Nov 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n Out of the Past<\/i>. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Perf. Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Radio-Keith-Orpheum,<\/span><\/p>\n 1947. DVD.<\/span><\/p>\n Phillps, Gene D.\u00a0Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder<\/i>. Lexington,<\/span><\/p>\n KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2010. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n Smith, Imogen Sara. \u201cMaximum Security: Film Noir, Domesticity, and the Female Captive.\u201d Bright<\/span><\/p>\n Lights Film Journal 69 (2010) n. pag. Web. 10 Nov 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n Sunset Boulevard<\/i>. Dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, and William Holden.<\/span><\/p>\n Paramount, 1950. DVD.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paper by Lauren Sousa. All films available on DVD. Any treatise, by any author, about film noir is by its nature reductive. A notoriously slippery group of films, noirs can be difficult to identify, and not everyone agrees on their definition. They were not all made after World War II, they were certainly not all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-papers","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}