For the ‘Doing Shots’ of Wilder’s Double Indemnity, I was struck by the scene at 1hr 43min timestamp. (I will try to find a better picture of the scene)
In this still, Walter Neff is confessing/not confessing his story into the Dictaphone for Keyes to find. However, toward the end of the film, Neff’s face is more haunted and coated with sweat from the gunshot wound. With the camera placed over his shoulder, Neff looks back towards us and the camera, making eye contact with the viewer. His face takes up most of the frame in a diagonal, and the whites of his eyes are stark against the office’s dark lighting. We can see Neff recognize someone, his expression shifting from exhausted to alert or scared. Soon, it is revealed that Neff sees Keyes in the doorway.
I wanted to use this scene to discuss Walter Neff’s relationship with the viewer and compare it to the other relationships in previous films. In The Maltese Falcon and Murder, My Sweet, the male lead is a private detective, morally gray yet firm in his beliefs, and is portrayed as an average looking middle class man. However, in Double Indemnity, Neff is not a private detective, and his morals are easily susceptible to Mrs. Dietrichson’s seduction. Neff is situated within the laws of the insurance industry, rather than the police. Thus, the insurance business acts as the same oppressive entity the male lead is fighting against. Furthermore, the viewer and male lead in previous films were discovering a murder plot that is outside of themselves, both equally as lost within the villains’ schemes. However, Walter Neff is the villain in the murder and slowly reveals the plot while leaving the viewer in the dark. In previous films, we know that the male lead represents the viewers: middle class, morally grey, and thrown into the midst of a mystery. When Walter Neff looks directly at the camera, he emphasizes that we are not a mirror to the male lead, and that we are separate entities. This breaks the trust between the viewer and male leads, breaking the trope of passive or incompetent male characters (like Marlowe).
Double Indemnity solidifies its place as a cornerstone film in the Film Noir genre, its narrative style and male lead combating rules established by other films. Namely, the film adds a new sense of mistrust in the viewers, which will change how the audience will suspect the male lead in future films. The male lead is no longer trapped within the ‘blank slate’ that he was previously in, instead able to take on selfish motivations of his own.