Blog Entry #2

Borde and Chaumeton wrote of the qualities of film noir in the article “Towards a Definition of Film Noir”.  In this article, they defined the qualities to be “nightmarish, weird, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel.”  Double Indemnity personifies the majority, if not all, of these traits.  They go on to state that “film noir is [crime] from within; from the point of view of the criminal.”  Again, Double Indemnity falls within this defining characteristic.  Borde and Chaumeton state that “In every sense of the word, a noir film is a film of death”.  Death, through the vehicle of murder, is the essence of Double Indemnity’s plot. 

Let’s breakdown the qualities as defined by Borde and Chaumeton.  Double Indemnity is “nightmarish” because it deals with the brutal murder of an innocent man for the gain of others.  Mr. Nirdlinger is killed by his wife, Phyllis, and his insurance agent, Walter Huff, to gain the premium from his accident insurance.  The insurance has a double indemnity clause, hence the title for the book, should Mr. Nirdlinger die from a train accident.  Phyllis and Walter orchestrate an “accidental” death with hopes of collecting big.  “Weird” can well describe the remarkable lengths Phyllis and Walter go to attempting to not only commit the murder, but to cover-up their involvement as well.  “Erotic” hasn’t flavored the book much up to this point, but it may still as I read more.  “Ambivalent” perfectly describes Walter’s, our protagonist, relationship with Phyllis following the murder of her husband.  Their relationship takes a definite “love-hate” swing immediately following the staging of the “accident”.  One quote from the book stuck out at me regarding that, it was Walter, writing as the narrator, which said “I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake”.  Finally, we have “cruel”.  The merciless murder of Mr. Nirdlinger fulfills this quality.

Another characteristic of the style is point of view, usually from that of the criminal.  The story is told by our protagonist, Walter Huff.  He kills a man simply for a monetary gain.  Nothing more, nothing less.  As he tells his story you get the impression that he has genuine remorse and guilt regarding the murder of Mr. Nirdlinger.  However, he cannot simply take it back, so he must continue on, no matter how conflicted he feels about it after the fact.  I am anxious to see the conclusion of his story, and how he deals with it all.

Lastly, we have death.  So far, only one death has happened in the book, that of Mr. Nirdlinger.  I speculate that by the end there will be at least one more, judging by the opening of the book.  The line was “That was how I came to this House of Death that you’ve been reading about in the papers.”  I could be wrong, but I doubt it.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Walter killed Phyllis by the end of the book.  He seemed to become paranoid about her towards the end of chapter 8.  She is the only one that can finger him in the crime.  Likewise, he can rat on her as well, though he likely wouldn’t, as he was the one that committed the actual murder.  She was just an accomplice. 

In the end, I am sure that this book will live up to the style of film noir.  It has, thus far, been a traditional example of the genre, and I see no chance that it will fall short of that.