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.
