A film discussion of the movie “Double Indemnity .” i need assistance to correctly state the discussion post to insure correctly formality within the statement. down below is all of the needed essentials. Thank you ~ 🙂
200-250 words. USE 3-4 TIME STAMPS.
‘I killed a man for money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman.’
Double Indemnity (1944, about 1 year before the end of WWII) is a beautifully made film noir that is the text book standard of a great noir of Hollywood’s classical age. As you watch the film, you’ll see how it checks all the boxes about the style and content of a noir film. Choose 1 prompt below:
1. The Hays Code (see book p. 130-131), the film industry’s self-imposed standards about decency in the movies, includes these general principles and then more specific standards:
Under those three general principles were included the following specific standards (paraphrased):
a) Don’t show the method of murder or other crimes in a way that might inspire imitation.
b) Don’t show adultery as something fun and attractive
c) Don’t portray sexual passion in a way that might “stimulate the lower and baser element” (i.e. borderline creeps, people who are crude or tend to be sexually aggressive)
d) Don’t show explicit sexual seduction- it should be indirect.
e) A later addition to the Code, added by Joseph Breen, was that sin could be showed, but it had to be punished somehow. The “sinners” couldn’t end up happily ever after.
Based on your viewing of the film and how the story was told, in what ways did Billy Wilder, the director, get around the controls of Hays Code in his film? In other words, what story or filming strategies did he use to make a sexy, adulterous, murder film, and yet stay within the PCA and Hays Code regulations? (So, think about what was seen and unseen, what was said and unsaid, etc.)
2. Most films of the World War II era that showed life in America depicted nuclear families strong and unified, just as America itself was supposed to be strong and unified in its fight against the enemy. The home and family were “sacred” institutions, and to keep morale high during the difficult war years, the home and family could not be seen as anything else. (Imagine soldiers away from home, wondering if their wives were being faithful to them! Or worrying if some con man is seducing their daughter. Bad for morale.) However, some noir films, especially those at the end of the war and in the immediate years after, depicted a different perspective of the home and family and in subtle ways attacked the myth of the “perfect marriage, perfect family.”
Think about the representation of home, family, marriage, and male leadership in this film- both in the story and in the film’s form (the way the film looks). Aside from the obvious part that the wife wants to kill her husband, what are the signs of social dis-unity and discontent in this film? How does the story subvert (turn upside down) the traditional pre-war roles of men, women, and maybe even teens, in society?