In the movie, Double Indemnity, people were tired, sad, and bored. Nevertheless, this shows a good example of what’s good about film noir. As Film Noir shows the dark side of the city. There was a great balance in both dark and light with the lighting. When they times that there were any excited it was most bright while dark in very grim or evil scenes. The scene of Phyllis covered in a towel shows how seductive the character. There was also a strong use of cigars or cigarettes in the film. Additional, gives out that smoky vibe to the film. All the men in the film work while the females stay home and shopping. This example shows how their culture were back in the 1940s and 1950s A good example of these anxieties would be Phyllis. She was manipulative and seductive throughout the whole film. She wanted to kill her husband out of boredom of her marriage. She was representing as a white housewife of the 40s or 50s. She didn’t have to work as a nurse anymore and can stay home all day. Of course, …show more content…
Phyllis was bored of her life. She manipulated Walter into killing her husband saying her husband abused her. Consequently, this her the damsel in distress. After the act was committed, she was the old to be more stressful of the murder as Keyes suspects that she may be involve in the murder. As for cultural anxieties, the reminds of how the nuclear family will work. The men are expected to go to work every day. While the women were expected to stay home and make sure the house is clean. Just like the movie, Sunrise, Phyllis and the women represents the dark side of the city.
Both of the theses women wanted the men to kill their love. However, the only difference is that Walter committed the act while the husband didn’t. Corruption would be a word that I would like to use to describe these characters. Walter and the husband (Sunrise) shows what corruption can do to people. Ultimately, making these do devious that will soon regret later on. Corruption was definitely use in the Industrial Era as people with money were portray to have more power over. As a city as the character, I would like to use Phyllis and Lola. Lola represent the light or good of the city. While Phyllis represents the dark or evil of the city. Despite Lola being a supporting role, she was still very interesting and a relevant character. Lola was the opposite of Phyllis which lead her to dislike her step- mother. This shows the darkness or Film noir as well as the anxieties in the
film.
ubiquitous and constitutes the greatest psychical danger-situation known to the human organism...' (ibid.). Isabel Menzies Lyth argues that these anxieties are
In 1943, James M. Cain wrote one of his most selling novella “Double Indemnity”. The following year, Billy Wilder, a movie director, with the help of Raymond Chandler, a screenwriter, took the book and adapted it to the big screen while keeping the original title. Eventually, the movie became very popular and nowadays, “Double Indemnity”, widely regarded as a classic, is often considered as a paradigmatic film noir since it has set the standard for films that followed in that genre. The movie adaptation is significantly more effective in creating the mood of suspense and making the overall story tenser through the changes made to the main characters, namely Walter Huff, Barton Keyes and Phyllis Nirdlinger.
Although industry regulations restricted the film to show many scenes described in the book, such as the sexual relationship between Veda and Monty, the film in reality reinforces the theme by showing the tragical climax and denouement at the beginning of the film. Unlike the book, the film takes off with a gruesome murder scene followed by an attempted suicide, instantly creating a dark overtone characteristic of the film noir era. Throughout the film, constant intermission scenes create discontinuities and seemingly attempts to remind viewers of the eventual destination of the plot. Every time when Mildred prepares for a new stage in her life such as being together with Monty and deciding to open a restaurant, the flashback recount is suddenly cut off as the audience is snapped back into reality with Mildred and the officer at the police station. Along with the dark tone created in the very beginning, this narrative design casts a sense of crime on the whole plot, providing viewers with a feeling of desperation for every inappropriate action taken by the characters. Eventually, when the film ends with both Mildred and Veda punished in their own ways, a major release of emotions among the audience lands the final knockout punch on the “unladylike” lives of Mildred and Veda, emphasizing once again the traditional domestic expectations for women in the mid-20th
First and foremost, film noir refers to the visual style of a picture. The imagery of film noir was influenced by early 20th century German expressionism, featuring distorted, sinister shapes and shadows. These precursors to film noir used abstract figures and looming shadows for bizarre, emotionally stirring results. Techniques such as chiaroscuro were used to give a dark and minimalistic feeling. In many cases lighting is limited to a single harsh light source, which obscures the image, and even throws shadows across actors’ faces. These elements ensure that an audience regards the actors and the setting with equal importance. Oblique angled shots permeate many film noirs, naturally provoking anxiousness and apprehension in the viewer. In Sun...
Roman Polanski's 1974 film, 'Chinatown', revolutionized the film noir genre. Aside from the absense of voice-over, the film shares all the same characteristics with earlier noirs. That is, of course, except for the fact that ?Chinatown? is filmed in color. Because of this, it is more difficult upon the first viewing to immediately classify the movie to this genre. In movies such as ?Double Indemnity? even scenes that take place during the daytime are dark, and since it is a black and white film, this is easy to do. However, in a film with color it is much harder to create this dark effect, especially in scenes that are filmed outdoors. Polanski makes references to symbols that remind the audience that although ?Chinatown? is in color, it still belongs in the genre. For example, one of the first lines in the movie is, ?I just had [the venetian blinds] installed on Wednesday.? Venetian blinds are often seen in the genre, and the reference immediately makes the connection between this...
1. Walter - His dreams of owning a licquor store conflict religiously with Mama's value system. The conflict between Mama and Walter is amplified by the fact that it is Mama's apartment in which the family lives and Walter is unable/unwilling to make decisions because Mama is so domineering. Ironically, it is the one decision that she eventually lets Walter make which nearly destroys the family.
Film noir (literally 'black film,' from French critics who noticed how dark and black the looks and themes were of these films) is a style of American films which evolved in the 1940s. " The Internet Movie Database LTD. Film noir typically contains melancholy, and not so moral themes. Another characteristic of film noir is just because the main character has the title hero, that does not mean that he will always be alive at the end of the book, or that the hero is always "good." Marlowe in The Big Sleep is a prime example of this concept.
An example of this paranoia would be Ellen’s nightmare. The text during the scene said “her soul heard the call of the deathbird”. This is not only paranoia and anxiety, but it is also a foreshadowing of the finale of the film as Nosferatu arrives into town spreading death and later dies because of Ellen. Nosferatu’s one weakness in the entire film is described as “an innocent maiden” sacrificing her own
A film about murder and the promise of love and money, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is a classic film noir movie. The protagonist, Walter Neff is a single insurance salesman who catches the hots for Phyllis, one of his customer’s, Mr. Dietrichson’s, wife. In the opening sequence of Double Indemnity, Wilder heavily illustrates the themes and plot that will be presented throughout the film. Wilder achieves this by symbolism, dialogue, and lighting.
Sultry, sexual, seductive, lethal—all of these are elements that make up the femme fatale character, a female character type found in many modern films. Defined as a ruthless siren who utilizes her sexuality to lure her unsuspecting male victim into a world of sinful desire for her own benefit, the femme fatale character has become increasingly popular since the film noir movement in the 1940s (Walker-Morrison 25). These temptresses rely on their sexuality and their cunning abilities to achieve their ultimate goals, paying little attention to the heartache and destruction they cause in the process. Perhaps the two finest examples of these sexy but dangerous characters are the sultry Phyllis Dietrichson in the 1944 film noir
The film Serpico, created in 1973, tells the true story of New York City police officer Frank Serpico and how he struggled to deal with police corruption. Serpico is a dramatic crime movie that displays the culture of police corruption that once was in New York in the 1960’s. At different points in the film you start to understand why some of the officers were corrupted. The film also displays the treatment that Frank Serpico received due to his reluctance to become corrupted himself. Ultimately the decisions that Serpico made nearly led to an untimely death. When watching this movie one theory surfaces which is Robert Merton’s “General Strain Theory.” I believe this theory partly explains some of the corruption, and why Serpico never
He then starts to patrol the town in his vehicle, while listening to the radio. He patrols a street and stops in front a house with some lights on. A woman is seen in the nude grabbing a drink from the fridge. The woman’s explicit parts of her body were not displayed, although the viewer could identify that she was naked. This scene tied in well with the swinging sixties. The sixties was a coming out party of sexuality. Director Jewison in my opinion wanted to display this. Nudity in films was very off-color and not taken well by the censorship committee during the sixties or Hays code. Director Jewison created the scene very tastefully and got his message across that times have begun to
According to David Cook’s, A History of Narrative Film, “both the problem pictures and the semi-documentary crime thrillers made it seem that Italian neorealism had found a home in an uneasy, if affluent, America. Yet another variety of postwar American film, one that depended on the controlled environment of the studio as well as on real locations for its depiction of the seamy underside of American life, soon appeared.” This literally was film noir, meaning “black film;’ it was discovered and named in 1946 by French critics. They gave it this name because when they saw American motion pictures they felt this strange mood of “cynicism, darkness, and despair in certain crime films and melodramas” (Cook, 293). While some regard Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the prototype for film noir,
Forth are Lighting and color. In case of Lighting, this film uses High key light that makes this film look like natural light and feel warm. In the case of color, some scene of this film use warm color to express love and warmth to audience such as in the wedding scene or some scene use dark color to express about sad feeling such as funeral scene and in scene that Rosie knows her dad was died. I think in some scene if you watch it in HD, it’s very beautiful such as in scene that Rosie drinks a cup of coffee and thinks about the past in sunset time because Lighting and color of sunset time is very
In the video, they described multiple situations in which individuals experienced extreme negative emotional reactions to conflict; for example, her father’s angry outburst at the dinner table, her own emotional trauma as a result, the men from the executive team angrily shouting at Jane, and the people in the work shop expressing their anger about the priest. In the article by Way and Jimmieson (2016), they reported that negative affective reactions and increased anxiety are direct outcomes of relationship conflicts such as