Blog Post #3

I chose a quote from director Abraham Polonsky to describe film noir.  He said, "A certain kind of hard film full of difficult emotional things and explosions of emotional drama and anxiety."  That description also describes the movie Double Indemnity.  In this film Walter was living a normal life as an insurance rep until he met and fell for Phyllis.  He developed emotions for her quickly and the roller coaster ride of emotions, drama, and suspense come in.  From Walter and Phyllis murdering her husband, to Walter finding out Phyllis is also seeing someone else, then to him murdering Phyllis.
In Double Indemnity Phyllis is a femme fatale.  One type of femme fatale described in the documentary Film Noir is the "spider woman."  The actress Marie Windsor put it simply she said, "the classic femme fatale to me is a woman that's usually getting the man into bed, then into trouble".  In Double Indemnity that is exactly what Phylllis did.  When her and Walter met Phyllis was portrayed as a sexy character, she met him for the first time in a towel.  I believe she is a typical femme fatale because she was a sexual character who never loved Walter but just used him for her own advantage.
In the beginning of the film when Walter is confessing on the dictaphone the lighting and confession show film noir.  He is alone in a dark room with low key lighting and the camara is focused on him.  In the film the choice of music also indicates film noir.  For example the diegenic sound coming from the radio in the "About that Ankle" clip we had to watch gives the feel of the film noir style.  Walter comes in as a dark shadow then comes into the light.
Neo-noir is like film noir except modernized in color.  Both film types have a lot of the same elements, they can have a femme fatale, they can have the same theme, and ideas.  In Memento it has color and also black and white.  It begins with a film noir feel, a man is shown shot in the head so right there it indicates drama and violence that film noir has.