We contemplate if murder is ever justifiable-if there is a situation where we would commit a murder. Ultimately, confounding the answer to which character is the real murderer?Īs the shadows confound who is moral and who is not, we also question our own morality. But the shadows trick us-making the audience trust Phyllis. By the end of the film though, it is clear that Phyllis was the true mastermind of this plot, the metaphoric killer if not the literal one.
Again, the light should indicate that Walter is the murderer, the character whom we should fear. In several scenes, we see Walter shrouded in shadows while Phyllis’ face shines with light. As he agrees to help Phyllis kill her husband, Walter faces his own dark shadow, his own lack of morality he literally walks into his shadow and into the darkness of his own soul. He slowly walks toward the curtain, as his shadow becomes larger and larger until it overtakes him. In one particular sequence, as Walter Neff and phyllis Dietrichson discuss murdering her husband so that Phyllis and Walter can be together, Walter faces his own shadow in the dramatic shot below. Which characters do we trust-the one in the shadows or the lit-up character? And what happens-as Phyllis does in Double Indemnity-when the character we trusted, the very anti-thesis of shadows in our mind, might really be the ‘bad’ guy? Who should the audience trust then? Shadows play a critical role in Double Indemnity-the starkness between the dark black shadow and white bright light reminds the audience of the very critical question of morality in the film. This entry was posted in Uncategorized by Caroline D. “Their post-murder kiss in a shadow that bisects their heads…confirm their departure from social as well as stylistic norms.” (Lott, 549) Noir utilizes non-normative Whiteness to define pure Whiteness it preserves Whiteness by also preserving the idea that Blackness is equal to moral decay. The moral decay of each character in the film is repeatedly associated with racial darkness. Yet, as Lott explains, it becomes abundantly clear in Double Indemnity that non-Whiteness comes to signify the moral underbelly of society: Phyllis lives in a Spanish-style house, Keyes describes Neff’s job as “monkey work,” Neff’s alibi comes from the Black garage attendant in his building, the film ends with Neff wishing he could escape across the border, and so on.
Even I, in the analysis above on the shadows of darkness and their association with darkened morality, failed to discuss the racial source of these visual representations of morality. Lott questions why no one has confronted Film Noir’s association of the morality of the White self and racial darkness-successfully arguing that White moral darkness in noir is rooted in race.
“Only you’re a little more rotten.” –Walter Post-Reading Analysis That those who deny their dark morality are simply unaware of what exists within their own shadows. Noir as a genre, and this film specifically, communicates that this immutable darkness does indeed exist in every American soul.