Wilder Assignment

How does Wilder convey the characters and their relationships in the penultimate scene of Double Indemnity?

In Double Indemnity, Wilder uses cinematography to convey the characters and their relationships in specific ways. For example, when the audience see the two shot of Walter stood behind Phyllis, they are close together. And then in the next shot we see that Phyllis is still in the same position but Walter is in the other corner of the room. This suggests that there is closeness between them when they are together but when they are apart they are very distant, but also Walters has his hands either side of Phyllis’s neck, this suggests that there is something else going on or that there is an unstable relationship between them and it’s causing them to doubt each other. Wilder shows Walter as being a bit blind, he can’t see that Phyllis is using him to get the money from the insurance, Phyllis is getting lots of money from and it and she tries to kill him near the end of the scene.

Wilder also uses Noir generic features to convey the relationship in Double Indemnity. For example, when Walter is just entering the house, the audience first see his shadow rather than him then after then a couple of seconds later you see him step through the archway, another Noir feature. This shadow is a good example of the doppelgänger effect, it give the impression to the audience that Walter is leading two life’s or that there is two sides to him: a good side and an bad side, the good side is on the outside and the bad side is on the inside. Also the use of shadow helps the audience to understand when the good or bad side is present, so when his face is dark it shows that he is going to do something bad. Also the stereotypical woman figure smoking in the arm chair is a noir generic feature, usually you see a man figure in the arm chair smoke a cigar but it’s a woman, this might suggest that Phyllis is strong character and uses her body to get the men to do what she wants. This means her relationship between her and Walter is based on lust and Walter doing what she says because he so in love with her false identity, she puts on an act to get the men to like her.

Another technique Wilder uses is expressionist mise-en-scene. For example, when Walter walks into the room where Phyllis is, the audience can see the shadow created by the venetian blinds on the walls. This creates an effect that radically changes the mood in the room; also the blinds fracture the light coming through the window. The light contrasts to the colour in the room already, the light coming through the window is shown up as white and the colour in the room is mainly black or a dark shade of grey. Also it’s extremely exaggerated the light is being shone all over the back wall; this makes Walter and Phyllis harder to see and also makes them look like silhouettes so the detail of them is reduced. This suggest once again that Walter and Phyllis both have bad sides to them and the darkness showing is showing that something bad will actually happen in the scene. 

Lighting is used to convey the characters and their relationships in the scene. For example, when Walter walks into the house the audience can see that he is very well illuminated but when you see Phyllis in the big arm chair you can only just see her. This plays on the idea of good and bad again, in this case Walter is the good character and Phyllis is the bad character. This is stereotypical of a woman in a noir thriller; the woman is the person in charge getting foolish men to do all the work for her. This might suggest that Walter is too in love with Phyllis to see that she is trying to use him to get the money from killing his husband, but when he actually sits down and starts talking the audience realise that he is a lot smarter than we think. The relationship between Walter and Phyllis is unstable and Walter realises that the insurance company are onto them and he wants out. This shows that there relationship is not what it was at the start and that it’s not going to work out. Later on in the scene we see the lighting portraying the two characters in a different way, when Phyllis is hugging Walter it goes to an over-shoulder shot and Walters face is in the dark and Phyllis’s face is lit up and also it seems to look like a halo above her head, in this situations the roles have reversed and now Walter is that bad person and Phyllis is the good person. This representation of the Phyllis being the good person is anti-stereotypical.

Finally Wilder uses Costume/props to convey the characters and their relationships in the scene of Double Indemnity. For example, when Walter goes to shut the window Phyllis pulls out a gun to try and kill him, this shows Phyllis trying to get rid of Walter so she can have all the money, it’s also very stereotypical of a woman to try and get men to do the hard work and get then rid of them all just as they’re going to get the money in a noir film. Also the costumes are very stereotypical for the time that the film was made in. For example, you can see the clothes that Walter wears when he walks and stops in the archway. This suggests that he is the stereotypical man of that time period, going out to work and getting the money for the family. Also it’s a bit anti-stereotypical in the way he goes off and has this plan with a woman that he has only just met and expects her to fall in love with him. The average man wouldn’t do this because they would be married whereas Walter isn’t. Its might suggest some other things about his character and might make the audience wonder why he isn’t married too.