Film noir in its time was dominated by powerful women and fragile men. Double indemnity is no exception, with the two main characters being romantically involved it lead to a downward spiral throughout the film. The film begins meeting our main character Walter Neff late at night with a trench coat covering his arms. Its poses a sense of mystery about Neff as he wonders into his office he begins to narrate what transpired in the last few weeks. As he narrates he is projected as a strong and confident sales representative for a insurance company. His initial impression is that he an intelligent and viable character who is hard to break. Contrary to this initial impression Neff actually is easily manipulated by his feelings. On the first sale he tries to make in the film he approaches the house of our second main character Phyllis Dietrichson. The audience can immediately detect sexual tension between the two just based of their dialogue.
When watching DI, I took notice of some of the odd characteristics about Neff, for instance he comes off as a sociable person but during the film he spends most of his time alone. He is never in big groups only accompanied by 2 or 3 other people. He's non emotional around other which leads most to believe that he is bothered by much. In the film he is constantly judging his actions and thinking everything out in his head to prevent the worst case scenario but even in doing so he ends up letting his emotions get in the way of his logical thoughts. Neff is strong on the outside a frail on the inside. His relationship with women is different than his with others for example he is somewhat cocky around his co-workers but when around either Phyllis or Lola we see him become soft and vulnerable. He sometime tries to take control of the situation with the females but inevitable fails to alleviate the problem which in turn makes things worse. Our character Neff is a not so easy to understand as he puts up a good front for the most part but cant help but crumble at the feet of a powerful, manipulative and beautiful women.
Simpson,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed how you talked about powerful women and fragile men as I feel as thought this is an integral part in film noir. I also enjoyed how you went further into this by discussing how easily Walter can be manipulated by the women considering this is what leads to so many problems within the film. However, when you talked about how Walter was unemotional and bothered, I think it would be cool if you could somehow connect that to his relationships with women and how it effects or influences these relationships.
I thought it was interesting on how you discussed Neff's characteristics, and on how he appears strong but is very weak when it comes to pretty women. I also noticed how isolated Neff really is from the rest of the characters. I think it would be cool to look at how this connects to Macbeth and at the way Shakespeare chose to characterize Macbeth as being weak and Lady Macbeth as a stronger figure
ReplyDeleteI like your description of the movie and of the characters within. As the others have mentioned you did a good job of describing the break from gender rolls that we see within this movie. The idea of powerful women and weak men was not common for the time period and I enjoyed your analysis of why this was used as a powerful tool within the movie. You also did a good job of explaining Film Noir as a whole and describing the different aspects of Film Noir.
ReplyDelete