Monday, January 14, 2019
Double Indemnity
Choose one scene and describe it briefly for me. Then look at it through a feminist lens. How are women depicted cinematically? Be sure to use solid cinematic evidence from the scene as well as quotes from the Mulvey essay. Also, mention the scene's relationship to the film as a whole and why you chose the scene.
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The scene that I chose to analyze was the scene at the end where Walter goes to Phyllis’ house and kills her. I chose this scene because it is the clearest in which the man is dominating power over the woman. In the scene, Phyllis is sitting for most of the shots, with Walter hovering over her, implying that Walter holds the power in the situation. Reminiscent of the second time Walter goes to Phyllis’ house, the blinds cast dark, horizontal shadows across the faces of the characters and the walls in the background. It highlights the feeling of imprisonment, which is reflected as the plot unfolds and Walter & Phyllis are closer to being caught. However, this was not the tone of the first scene in which this lighting scheme was used (the second time Walter goes to the Dietrichson house). In that scene, the shadows that are created reflect a type of romantic or manipulative imprisonment on behalf of Phyllis attempting to seduce Walter into helping her. Another reason that I decided to use this scene is that it is the moment in which Phyllis finally might be able to hold the upper hand. She has manipulated all of the men in her life up to this point and it seems that she might be able to do it again, this time with the desire for murder. This is shown with a shot before Walter enters the house in which Phyllis hides a handgun beneath the chair that she proceeds to drape herself over. When Phyllis actually takes charge in an attempt to murder Walter, he still mocks her with “You can do better than that, can’t you Baby? Better try again.” He is still asserting his power over her, continuing with a “maybe if I came a little closer”, as if shooting him once wasn’t enough and that even with a bullet in his arm he is still stronger than her.
ReplyDeleteWhen Phyllis dies in Walter’s arms, she wilts against him, leaning on him for support. Walter killed Phyllis to stop the power she held over him. It is clear by this point, however, that Walter’s confessional voice-over throughout the film is meant to have put all of the blame on Phyllis. It is as if it would be impossible for him, an honest and hardworking man to commit these two murders without the influence of a corrupt woman behind them. His confession to Keyes is not to confess to the crimes he committed but to demonize Phyllis and blame everything on her; after all, he was not in control of his actions. This further reinforces the idea that the woman is either passive or that she is aggressive and needs to be stopped, the later usually meaning that at one point she had power over a man. This relates to Laura Mulvey’s essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema as she explains that when a woman holds power over a man in a film, she gives it up by either marrying him or dying. She also comments on Budd Boetticher’s interpretation of “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.” This is proved by Walter’s need to blame his actions on Phyllis in Double Indemnity. Phyllis exists as a force of evil outside of Walter’s story, influencing his ideas but not present for much more than to cater to the man (albeit in a negative way).