Film Noir

Double Indemnity and the Production Code Discussion Notes

Influences

• German Expressionism
• Detective
• Surrealism
• Artistic Modernism
• Pulp Fiction
• WWII
• Existentialism
• Serie noire

Double Indemnity

• Co-written by director/writer Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler
• Based on novel by James M. Cain

James M. Cain

• Double Indemnity
• The Postman Always Rings Twice
• Mildred Pierce

Raymond Chandler

• Attack on mid class pretentiousness, main stream values, mass culture
• Such as the Book of the Month Club -
• Established detective fiction aligned with femininity
• Popular female British detective writers, ex. Agatha Christie - he believed was responsible for dumbing down the culture
• Most highly paid writer in Hollywood

Discussion Questions

1. How is Double Indemnity different from The Maltese Falcon? similar?
2. According to Naremore, how does Double Indemnity represent Fordism? How its a critique?
3. How does it represent futility?
4. What are the visual associations of the women in the film?
5. What are the dominant visual and narrative elements from the film?
6. Where do our sympathies lie?

• What is Fordism? Corporate America; tailored assembly life
• Critique of dehumanization of the workforce - high productivity
• Phylis's clothing - white then a combination of black and white then black
• Phylis's culture (artifice) vs nature (Lola)
• Double Indemnity is darker visually and in the story
• Futility shown in flashbacks - inevitable
• Dominant visuals and narrative - go, stop, industry, clockwork murder, market
• sympathies - transfer of guilt (how the audience bestows guilt

L'Amour fou

• Mad Love - also seen in Gun Crazy
• Ethical value
• obsessive
• irrational
• doing anything for love
• surrealist principles

Production Code

• 1920s scandals - Sin City
• MPAA headed by Will Hays
• Don'ts and Be Carefuls
• Production Code written in 1930
• Films took liberties
• 1934 Code amended under Joseph Breen
• 1950 - low attendance
• 1951 - revised but ignored
• after WWII many things started to break down

Double Indemnity Got Away with...

• Adultery
• Lola's mom's murder
• They punished themselves
  • skirt capital punishment
  • took it with their own hands
• Audience got full details on plotting the crime