双重赔偿

The film Double Indemnity is a classic film noir which was produced in 1944, and it was a unique period of time from 1940s to 1950s that Hollywood focuses on producing film noir for long. It creates an atmosphere of suspense and uncanny murder being surrounded during the whole film, as well as the gender considerations that are involved, including the topic of masculinity.

The character Walter Neff played by Fred MacMurray stands out as a significant male character being described. As an insurance salesperson, this kind of relatively normal background setting of characterization is commonly used in film noir, in order to reveal the theme normal people could also face, as a description of generation and history. Moreover, the director put so much effort on the storytelling and the fluency of describing the crime, which makes the plot clear, thus the complex humanity of characters is a key point that the suspense has essentially been made.

In the scene in which Phyllis shoots Neff, Neff was attracted by the money and sexuality that Phyllis could give to him, but Phyllis said that she fell in love with him. Violence and love being discussed together in film noir as a relation. When love is created for the same goal between protagonists, it will eventually fade out and become fake once the goal is not achieved. So, masculinity was discovered by the “fake” love existing between two protagonists, and the initial and final motivations of Neff could be a transition from masculinity taking over his mind to their love revealing the goodness and evilness of his humanity. Neff thinks himself as a perfect character and he is obsessed with his actions, including to get what he wants like money and women as he takes his masculinity as an important part of himself, so that his desire was the initial motivation and it combines together with Phyllis and they two illustrate an extreme negative side of humanity. It ends with an irony that the loss of money and women. “I killed him for money - and a woman - and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?” This quote summarizes the ironic and tragic ending of the film which demonstrates the theme of gender and materialism as significant topics in humanity.