Double Indemnity Scene Analysis
Double Indemnity (1944) can be considered to be one of the films most representative of American film noir. Double Indemnity (1944) is the story of a woman, Phyllis Dietrichson, who has manipulated her way into marriage with a wealthy man, Mr. Dietrichson, and subsequently conspires with an insurance salesman, Walter Neff, to help kill her husband. Under the premise of being concerned for her husband's safety, Phyllis takes out an accident insurance policy, which is guaranteed to pay her at least $50,000 in the event of Mr. Dietrichson's untimely death. When Walter informs Phyllis that she can get $100,000 from the insurance policy if her husband dies in a rare accident, such as an accident involving a train, because of a double indemnity clause in the policy, the nefarious duo decide to concoct a plan that will make it appear as though Mr. Dietrichson fell to his death from a moving train, thus allowing Phyllis to claim $100,000. Through its mise-en-scene, Double Indemnity (1944) is able to create an atmosphere of paranoia, entrapment, seduction, and unease.
Billy Wilder, who along with renowned author Raymond Chandler, wrote the screenplay for the film, directed Double Indemnity (1944). In film, a director is responsible for leading "the actors in performance, determines the staging of the action, supervises all aspects of shooting, and works with the producer, writer, and designer before production and with the film and sound editors after production to ensure consistency and excellence of the movie as well as the best possible use of personnel, materials, and resources provided by the producer" (Mast & Kawin, 2003, p. 681). As a director, Wilder directed 27 films, from 1934 to 1981 (Billy Wilder, 2012).
Cain (afterward coupled by Mickey Spillane, Horace McCoy, and Jim Thompson) -- whose books were also recurrently tailored in films noir. In the vein of the novels, these films were set apart by a subdued atmosphere and realistic violence, and they presented postwar American cynicism to the extent of nihilism by presuming the total and hopeless corruption of society and of everyone in it. Billy Wilder's acidic Double Indemnity
Gavin is able to better understand the limitations of Scottie's acrophobia as Scottie believes that Gavin is a trustworthy individual and is therefore willing to explain the limitations with which he is faced. When Gavin inquires about the extent of Scottie's acrophobia, Scottie replies, "It just means that I can't climb stairs that are too steep or go to high places like the bar at the Top of the
Of note, Out of the Past was released in Europe and Great Britain as Build My Gallows High. It seems that both films could have been subtitled with this alternative note, particularly when we focus upon the editing -- each piece is but a plank in the construction of the gallows and when the camera has had enough of these nefarious people they are then cast aside as they do
Memento as Film Noir Christopher Nolan's Memento as Film Noir Film noir rose to prominence in the late 1940s and was at first described as being "murder with a psychological twist (Spicer 1). Since the 1940s, the film noir genre has undergone a few changes, yet the central concepts of the genre remain the same. Christopher Nolan's 2000 film Memento is a neo-noir film that integrates many of the concepts found in
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