Double Indemnity and Fatalism
It was Friday when She walked into my office. The low light of the November afternoon was filtering through the venetian blinds, scattering stuttering bars of inky black and silky gold across the desk in front of me. Walking in as she did, one long leg in front of the other, I found myself taking a shallow drag on the cigarette in my mouth, suddenly short for breath, tight in the chest. She asked for my help, and I looked at the clock ticking on the wall. Almost closing time. I opened my mouth, lips pursed and ready to wisecrack the dame, but I stopped. Something in her eyes. Emeralds embedded in the centre of a cream pool, milky and soft white. I sighed and leant forward, offering a light to her outstretched hand. That was my first mistake. It’s always the dame.
Film Noir is no stranger to pessimism. For a genre infused with the anxieties of a masculine, war-weary America, characterised by heavy helpings of ‘existential anguish’ (Naremore, 2008, p. 37), it is perhaps unsurprising that it contains so many examples of negatively-charged, down-trodden narratives. These stories are mired in an atmosphere of depressive determinism, inspired partly by the sociological state of 1940s America and partly by the cultural turn to existentialism surging throughout Europe and the United States during that same time. Culturally, as the advent of portable technological advancements in photography and filming led to widespread coverage on the shocking horrors of the War, the American ‘sense of victory’ was inextricably tangled with a ‘vision of horror’ (p. 102); of course, this confused mood of horrific successes was only exacerbated after the War was over, when both the returning soldiers and home-stuck civilians struggled to reckon with the new oxymoronic world they were now a part of. Elsewhere, the cultural attitude to existentialism propagated an interest in the ‘world of obsessive return, dark corners, or huis-clos’ (Naramore, 2019, p. 5), found throughout the Noir film, that pointed to a hidden culture of violence and danger lying shallow, directly below the thin facade of American exceptionalism that was explicitly championed in the name of national positivity. Those French scholars who first defined Film Noir believed this explicit unveiling of the darkened underworld was exploited in narratives pointing to the everyday ‘violence and criminality of American life’, claiming the American and emigrated European Directors crafted spectacular ‘critiques of American capitalism’ (p. 7) which were exceptionally explored within the popular film genre.
There is plenty of evidence to support this theory, both within the production histories of the films, and the narrative content found within them. Many of these deterministic film noirs are characterised with a significant attribute of cultural malaise; an outright resignation to the slow downfall of both the central characters and the microcosm of American society they stand in for - often, male protagonists are stuck fighting this charge of inevitability, unaware that their own immoral actions, spurred on, as they are, by the modern American world, simply spiral them faster towards the mortal sealing of their fate. Inherently, this desperation in the American artists for societal difference where there is none present inspires a resigned mood of fatalism - this was subsequently infused into the creative spirit that poured onto the pages of every screenplay, ingrained in the actors’ performances and dripped onto the silvery cellulose nitrate of Kodak film stock. Examples abound of noirs produced within the Wartime and its aftermath that deal with this concept, each exploring the mistruth of the fabled “American Dream” and its subsequent, inevitable consequences on the moral fibre of these inhabitants of the “promised land”.
With a narrative centred around the slow decline of fate, fortune and steadily-decreasing criminal circumstances, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) is a fantastic foray into this cynical realm. By introducing a protagonist who simply wants to cross the States and reconnect with his fiancée, throwing every variety of difficulty at his feet (accidental manslaughter, a vicious and greedy femme fatale to coerce him into illegal activity, and a subsequent escalation to an unfortunate murder), Detour is representing both the ‘western frontier’ and its promising ‘quest for individual freedom’ as a ‘meaningless circle or a trap’ (Naremore, 2008, p. 148) - a desert road that finds no end, a cheap motel with a corpse inside, a journey that quickly turns from hopeful to hopeless. Stylistically, the film’s own “Poverty Row” cost-cutting measures enhance this atmosphere of cheapness, creating a ‘pinched difficulty and claustrophobia’ that outlines the thin facade of elegance - the rear-projection techniques that present a non-real highway, the bare sets that suggest a materially impoverished America, the characters who range from criminals to ‘low-rent imposters’ - it all suggests that here, in this dark world of the “real” United States, ‘nobody has a chance of success’ (p. 149).
There is never a facade of positivity to be found within the film itself, however. With Detour, we are immediately led to understand the protagonist’s inevitably dark fate: the film begins with his comically sour mood, an irritation with the song that will play throughout and an admission of some unknown misdeed. We then enter a flashback. This is a common trope within the Film Noir, and it is integral to crafting the sense of futility, giving the film its ‘powerful sense of predetermination’ (Phillips, 2009, p. 89) that denies any belief that the ending will be a happy one.
The predetermination can take many forms. Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) sees Burt Lancaster gunned down within the opening 10 minutes, presenting the remainder of the film as an exploration of the tragic events that led to his explosive murder. An antagonistically-led film like The Sniper (1952), may subvert this negative ending - here, the actively-evil, serial-killing main character, tortured by his own guilt and mental state, is aware of the futility of his actions, and pleads with the authorities throughout the runtime to find and capture him, reversing the expected fatalism and working against the antagonistic plot of the film to conclude the dark story as safely as possible. Sometimes, this knowing sense of predetermination is tied up with a recognisable sense of dramatic irony that bookends the narratives: though it remains mostly linear, Nightmare Alley (1947) toys with the idea of fatalism through strong foreshadowing - Stanton, the unfortunate protagonist, is explicitly told his inevitable fate during the opening of the film, and, unaware that this was the case, we see throughout the course of the film the steps to his downfall that will land him back exactly where he started. Criss Cross (1949) opens with our central couple, passionately embracing each other in their arms, caught in the headlights of a reversing car - we conclude with that same couple, lain dead, in each other’s arms, caught in the staccato bursts of a stuttering firearm (Phillips, p. 57). Similarly, classic heist films, limited by the realms of censorship and depicting criminal activity, were required to have a negative conclusion, giving it a ‘doomed fatality more appropriate to the moods of noir’ (Naremore, 2019, p. 45) - Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) sees the protagonist, Johnny, effectively execute the heist, only for his winnings to be publicly dispersed by a rogue pet. As Johnny says, watching his hard-stolen earnings fly into the wind, resigned to the oncoming police approaching to arrest him: “What’s the difference?”.
Much is the same within Double Indemnity (1944). Wilder wastes no time establishing the futility, beginning the film with Walter Neff’s stumbling escape to his office-space, spilling a confession into the dictaphone as blood drips from his possibly-fatal wound, indicating to the audience the film’s inevitable conclusion with little delay. As the developing story plays out through extended flashbacks, we are brought to understand how Neff originally got himself into his criminal predicament, how he engendered the situation to possess maximum levels of difficulty and how he came to cause his own demise at the hands of his duplicitous partner. The plot is as follows: Walter Neff, a door-to-door salesman finds himself drawn into a dangerously shadowy world of criminality, after attractively-enticing Phyllis Dietrichson convinces him to murder her husband, and, under intensely unique mitigating circumstances, apply for accident insurance under a ‘Double Indemnity’ clause.
The story of Double Indemnity sees the meeting of two hard-boiled minds packaged by the cinematography and gorgeously-crafted visuals of Billy Wilder: source material from James M. Cain’s novel, whose narrative is filled with ‘average men and women with obsessive compulsions they are driven to act upon, even to the point of self-destruction’ (Merrill, 2014, p. 352), those typical of his writing; the screenplay was adapted by Raymond Chandler, himself a champion of the hard-boiled trend, whose own hero often ‘struggles to preserve his humanity and integrity in the face of smothering social corruption’ (p. 353). Cain’s tendency to write fatal characters, plunging ‘toward corruption with a directness bordering on pathology’ (p. 353), clashes with Chandler’s preference for detective-fiction, and despite his best attempts to change the story, the fatal conclusion of Cain’s original remains (albeit a little altered). Here, what remains of Chandler’s misplaced positivity only serves to exacerbate the overwhelming feeling of futility.
Wilder utilises a variety of motifs to draw attention to this character's socially-conditioned fate and decision-making. Stylistically, he visually alludes to Neff’s future throughout the course of the film, utilising the chiaroscuro freedom of the noir cinematography to persistently trap his steadily-incriminating protagonist - everywhere Neff stands, he is beset by restrictive bars of black and white spewed by the modern venetian blinds - a visual immediately evocative of the metaphorical prison he is surrounding himself within (Phillips, p. 88).
Despite some clever visual symbolism, the look of Double Indemnity sees little inspiration in the expected German expressionist style - Wilder prefers to draw on his Weimar background to craft a critical vision of Fordist Amerika using a variety of ‘grimly deterministic metaphors’ (Naremore, 2008, p. 88). These metaphors find their appearance in the language of the film, emerging in a strong motif throughout of industrialised terms used to describe the machinations of fate - “the machinery had started to move and nothing could stop it”, he had “thrown the switch” and the “gears had meshed” - and even the oft-repeated mantra of commitment between the romantic characters, who are committed “straight down the line”, following the corpse-laden tracks to their inevitable conclusion. Even their sexual intercourse, implied as it must be by 1950s Hays standard, is presented as rather clinical and dispassionate in the afterglow, as Stanwyck fixes her hair and cleans her lipstick, and MacMurray ruminates on the dispatching of her husband.
Wilder exacerbates this work-weary, capital-obsessed world of America with similarly dejected imagery (p. 88) - Neff’s workplace, the Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company, is remarkably lacking in charm, possessing a central hub of repetitive work desks, ‘almost interchangeable, decorated with nothing more than statistical charts and graphs’ and forever overlooked by the moneymakers on all sides; his apartment appears characterless, better resembling a hotel room with a petulant storm of rain belting against the window; the marketplace where they meet to plot is filled with cans of anything that can ‘be packaged and arranged in neat rows’, their metal, mush-filled duplicity providing an impressive sound-barrier for frank discussions of murder and fraud. Or perhaps the public just doesn't care. Like a stale pot of joe, modern life has no flavour - in this dark version of America, murder is a commonly discussed topic, everything within the ‘public world is equally massified’ (p. 88) and neatly packaged for simple consumption.
At no point is the audience expecting Neff to escape his fate. But, why would we want to watch this? What entertainment can be drawn from these narratives of misery? Ian Jarvie (2005, p. 165) explores the possibility of applying Aristotles’ ideas of tragedy to the noir film. Of course, primarily, on a basic level, the simple ‘beauty and music’ of the art could ‘deliver pleasure’ - certainly, the gorgeous cinematography, elegant soundtracks and stirring performances are highly entertaining, and well-championed both historically and culturally. Perhaps by labelling the film noir as a tragedy, the audience could gain a sense of sympathy for these fatal characters, or even some catharsis for seeing their criminal activities regulated - this outcome was a statistical inevitability, as under the Hays Code, every instance of ‘‘evil was punished in these pictures’, any possibility of ‘sin or corruption was depicted with a degree of restraint’ (Naremore, 2008, p. 98). However, Jarvie (p. 165) explains that Aristotles’ belief that tragic work ‘arouses the emotions of pity’ is incoherently applied within the noir, as these pitiful emotions are only aroused by ‘those suffering undeserved misfortune’. Noir characters, although presented as expected recipients of sympathy, are not ‘suffering undeserved misfortune’ - in fact, very often, their fates are the direct result of their actions, immorally skewed by a tempting femme fatale and the dangerous sexuality they possess.
These actions take them outside of the realm of socially-accepted morality, and into an entirely different realm. Much as Jarvie (2005, p. 175) suggests of Swede, the protagonist of The Killers, Walter Neff is driven by ‘self-preservation’ - his morality is ‘personal’, his criminal drive directly derived from the society around him. Afraid of the overwhelming nature of the modern workplace, Neff won’t even accept a desk-job from Keyes, fearful that the banality would get to be too friendly and he would lose the ‘pathetic sense of spontaneity that the door-to-door business offers’ (Silver, 2022, p. 274). In his own words, Walter tells us he killed “for money and for a woman. I didn't get the money... and I didn't get the woman”. This statement, hard-boiled dialogue as it is, has that same feeling of irony underpinning Nightmare Alley and The Killing, but it’s also a lie. Truly, it is this draining, monotony of repetitive work that originally compels Walter to deceive the insurance company he works for, where, for years, he has been thinking of how he could “crook the house for [himself]”, executing the perfect insurance scam. All that was waiting was a “shill to put down the bet”, and with the introduction of the dazzling Miss Dietrichson, Neff had his criminal incentive, smelling sweet of honeysuckle and adorned with a fetishised ankle bracelet to distract and deceive his idle mind.
As Jarvie (p. 179) explains, this entire idea of a ‘personal morality’ is itself, ‘incoherent’; a ‘false appearance’ designed to allow the noir characters to operate outside the designated ‘internalised social rules’ that all normative characters must follow. This was an inherently dangerous belief to allow to snowball, as American society was already reduced to a highly-volatile state following the war. The simple idea that the criminal activity was undertaken by ‘putatively upstanding citizens who are undone by greed and lust’, rather than an underworld populated by the expected gangsters was truly shocking, but likely offered a form of catharsis to a society equally desperate to ‘escape middle-class malaise’ (Silver, 2022, p. 273). However, by enforcing this necessity for proper policing, ensuring the criminals always have their comeuppance, the audience is assured ‘that the dark underworld has been kept at bay’, allowing some ‘semblance of normality to be restored’ (Jarvie, p. 167) - thus, this is more in line with attempts at containment than it is with attempts of catharsis. Even the audience finds themselves experiencing this all-encompassing charge of fatalism.
From the moment they sit in their cushioned seat, prepared to see another tale of monochromatic melodrama and criminally vicarious escapism, they are aware of how it is going to end. The criminal can’t win, they must be contained, and they certainly will be. They’re going to be tantalised by the fetishised femme fatale, pity for the sympathetically-characterised protagonist, and be shocked at the possibility of such violence and criminal scheming, but above all, by the film’s conclusion, they are going to walk away with one learned lesson: if you follow the path of modernity straight down the line, you won’t find a happy ending. But, of course, we already told you that at the beginning.
Reference List
Literature
Naremore, J. (2008) More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. California: University of California Press.
Naremore, J. (2019) Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP Oxford.
Phillips, A and Hillier, J. (2009) 100 Film Noirs (Screen Guides). London: British Film Institute.
Jarvie, I. (2005) ‘Knowledge, Morality, and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past’ in Conard, M. T. (ed.), The Philosophy of Film Noir. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, pp. 163 - 185.
Silver, A and Ursini, J. (2022) Film Noir. London: TASCHEN.
Merrill, R. & Simons J. L. (2014) ‘Razing Cain with Chandler and Wilder: The Prometheus-Pandora Myth in Double Indemnity’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 56, Issue 4, pp. 349 - 375.
Filmography
Double Indemnity, 1944. [Film]. Directed by Billy Wilder. US: Paramount Pictures.
Detour, 1945. [Film]. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. US: Producers Releasing Corporation.
The Killers, 1946. [Film]. Directed by Robert Siodmak. US: Universal Pictures.
Nightmare Alley, 1947. [Film]. Directed by Edmund Goulding. US: 20th Century Studios.
Criss Cross, 1949. [Film]. Directed by Robert Siodmak. US: Universal Pictures.
The Sniper, 1952. [Film]. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. US: Columbia Pictures.
The Killing, 1956. [Film]. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. US: United Artists.
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