In our last class, we spoke about the Noir City, and how it plays a part in Film Noir. Our film for the week was Asphalt Jungle. A perfect film for the subject. A major theme of Noir films is the lack of a home. A main character usually strolls into the main setting, sometimes only to ultimately leave again. This ‘homelessness’ leaves the character with only their actions as their base.

In Asphalt Jungle, the city is definitely a character. When the movie begins, we watch a man duck behind a pillar in order to not be seen by a passing patrol car. The background is constantly used in the story. Another example of this is the storefront  run by the character, Cubby. It is a well-known betting spot that all the characters are aware of for one reason or another. In one scene Cubby pays off a police lieutenant to keep it going. In another scene the robbers discuss the upcoming heist here. As the film reaches its climax, Cubby is told to close the place down. He refuses. Believing he has the upper hand, he blackmails the lieutenant, telling him that he’ll tell the commissioner all about their deal. The lieutenant grabs him and smacks him around the  room, turning the tide against Cubby who is now ready to confess.

Out of The Past is the favorite of the three film noirs that we watched so far. I won’t give an overview of the plot since we all watched it and knows what happens. The characters are what really do it for me. Jeff is the typical noir detective but adds his own unique demeanor and witty personality. He’s calm no matter the situation, and is so suave and funny, you cant help but find him likable. This makes us feel sorry when he does risk his life and job for a woman. Speaking of Kathie, she also turns out to be very likable. Yes, she is the femme fatale and yes, she does betray Jeff. But she is extremely beautiful, cute, and did seem legitimately happy when she was with him. Their relationship was very believable. When she pulls off those adorable teary puppy-dog eyes and acts all innocent, how can you not feel sorry for her when she gets slapped by Whit. Of course, this is part of her innocent-act to get guys as well as the audience to side with her so she can get her way.

Even the supporting characters like Meta and Whit were great. Whit was charismatic, always smiling, and wasn’t made out to be a complete ass like most “antagonists” are. Meta was sweet and caring and wanted nothing more to be with Jeff. She even gave him a chance to see Kathie one more time to see if he truly fell out of love with her. Meta trusted him enough to know he would do the right thing and come back to her. That is true love and Jeff did not deserve a dame like that. I think he knew this which is why the blind kid nodded with she asked if Jeff was running away with Kathie. We know this wasn’t true but I feel he said yes anyway because the kid knew that Jeff didn’t deserve her after all he did and would want her to move on to someone better.

This film shares a lot of similarities with Double Indemnity. Both are told in flashbacks. The main characters are smooth/witty talkers. They are clam under pressure. They fall for the pretty girl at first sight. The femme fatale starts off as an innocent, happy woman then later states how much she hates her lover and wants the detective to help in exchange for her love. We soon find out that killing is not a hard thing to do for these ladies. Both protagonists make a rash decision (that’s not totally out of character) to break the rules to be with her. At the end, the main character’s morality is tested when they have to choose between the right thing to do or stay with the beauty. Ultimately we find out that deep down they are a good person despite all the rules they broke and do the ethical choice by ending it with her. Walter Neff’s choice by framing her with Nino and then shooting her to get himself off the hook is debatable whether that was the most “ethical” choice, but we can probably all agree that she deserved it.

Here we find a case where the protagonist of the story cannot seem to run away from his past, thus the movie title “Out of the Past”. Jeff Bailey (really Jeff Markham), is a man who after trying to escape from his past, ends up confronting it until his last breathe. After being found by his original boss Whit, Whit tells Jeff that he must do one more job, in addition to his dark past. His job is to find a woman named Kathie Moffat (Whit’s ex-girlfriend), and bring her back to Whit. She also had a dark past where she shot Whit and stole $40,000 from him and ran away. As Jeffhttps://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/shadowplay/wp-admin/post-new.php meets Kathie, Jeff falls for Kathie and soon enough, they run away together getting into more shenanagans. It got to the point where Jeff fought his own partner protecting their secret relationship, and Kathie ends up shooting his partner. Kathie runs away while Jeff cleans up the murder he is not responsible for, and finds a deposit check of $40,000.

At another point, Whit has another job where once again, Jeff meets Kathie where she tries to make him fall in love again, but if fails. This new job in the end causes another person to die, which is the person who was framing Whit of tax fraud, as well as framing Jeff as the killer. Finally towards the end, Kathie kills Whit, and Jeff tries to run away and continue his life with his current girlfriend Ann. However, Kathie stops him and gives him two life decisions, he can either leave and will be framed for the deaths, or he can runaway with her. Choosing to leave with Kathie, he informs the police of her on a secret phone call and the police stop them later on when they leave. Kathie in anger, kills Jeff as the police begin shooting the car.

This is a story where there wasn’t really a true “hero” of the story because every main character had a dark past. What makes this noir different from the others is the fact that Jeff tried to make the best decisions rather than the right ones to get out of a situation. At the end, the best decision Jeff could make at the time is to completely stop Kathie by calling the police even though he was killed. In a way, knowing that Kathie will continue to pursue him, he instead sacrificed himself to end the double faced, Kathie.

In the film “Out of the past” we see yet another detective getting involved in a case he has to solve. It starts out with our detective Jeff in a small town actually living a false life going under a different identity His past catches up to him and now he has a new objective. To retrieve certain information for his old client who he double crossed. In the is noir film we have Jeff the hardboiled detective who actually attempts to escape his terrible decision. The femme fatale in this film I believe is the most corrupt from all three films we have watched so far. Kathie did not hesitate to kill anyone and every time she appeared in the film it meant some kind of trouble for Jeff. The relationship with the femme fatale starts much like the other 2 noir films. Jeff was called in and given a case to find her and bring her back. The reward was high enough to warrant the thought of going after her. Once Jeff met the femme fatale it was all downhill from there. She convinces Jeff to run away from Whit, the reward and be with her. Jeff is so infatuated he does just that. We can see that this is the classic noir film femme fatale set up. The private investigator tosses aside his case to get the girl.

In this film we see that Jeff is not interested in the femme fatale anymore but he cannot seem to escape her and her web of lies no matter what he does. He is also less morally corrupt than the other main characters. He made a mistake accepting the femme fatale and he tried to get away and lead a completely different life with a new woman. Instead of the main character looking for trouble the trouble finds him and does not want to let him go.

The story and film of Double Indemnity circle around the proclaimed protagonist of Walter Nuff, who is an insurance sales man and little did he know his life would change once he met Phyllis. Phyllis is portrayed as the femme fatale towards Nuff and both of them come to the conclusion of killing her husband by making it look like an accident, but with Nuff’s knowledge he knows the best way to gain more for their dirty deed. The book and the film both have a different way of telling the story, such as the death of Phyllis and how Nuff got shot for example. The Noir film describes an intense story between emotion and fear of getting caught. The femme fatale played a huge role to the influence of Huff because of her beauty he was blinded in making the right decision on what is good. The conclusion due to the femme fatale, holds Nuff to the despair end of no women, no luck and no life in the film, and leaves the viewers thinking he’s on the blink of death. Still in the book his end, is Keyes his friend in the company or the justice in the story, decides to let Huff live with what he did and send him off in a ship with Phyllis.

Compared to The Maltese Falcon, they both do portray the Femme Fatale as a strong influence to the protagonist and they both give off this tension of what could possibly happen next. I believe both gave off the perfect sense of a Noir Film and both were highly up on the interest.

In the film Double Indemnity, was exactly about the topic we discussed in class, femme fatale. From the  notes we took it completely described one of the main characters who was  Phyllis Dietrichson. The femme fatale of this movie was a beautiful woman who had a plan, not only one who she planned with the main character but also another which was one of her own plans. Just like any femme fatale she lead the main character believing they will end up together happily but it only cost the main character into danger and finding out the real truth. After they both finished their plan of killing Mr. Dietrichson, the main character, Walter Neff was expecting a plan within him and Phyllis, but Phyllis had a different plan of her own which she betrayal Walter an her own stepdaughter. After Walter found out that Phyllis was seeing her stepdaughters boyfriend behind her back and he went to confront Phyllis explaining why she betrayal him and she said it was only to persuade Nino into killing her stepdaughter due to jealously. In this particular scene you can see Phyllis again pulling her femme fatale to get things her way. In the end the “Femme fatale” that Phyllis has been portraying did not work out for her because she did not get things her way and died.

In conclusion I find both the Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity similar due to the femme fatale characters played in each movie but unfortunately they both did not get the things they wanted their way.

The  second black and white film in my repertoire is  “Double Indemnity”, another of the film noir genre. In this one, however, the role of the protagonist was extremely amoral, to the point of murder. Walter Neff, an insurance salesman started out by completely disregarding the sanctity of the femme fatales marriage. As suspicious as he was of her intentions when they first met, he allowed himself to be drawn in by Mrs. Dietrechson. The femme fatale played two different roles, one of a naïve, helpless woman who only did her wifely duties, while her husband earned and treated her like a second class citizen.  The second role was that of a calculating, conniving and heartless individual who would do whatever it took to get what she wanted. Her coldness became evident in the movie when we saw that Walter was a nervous wreck after the murder, but she was calm and collected, doing exactly what was planned. She even started to make a contingency plan in case Walter didn’t follow through.

Many of the conventions of film noir were present, the use of light and shadows conveyed the mood, the music which was only present and became louder and at a higher tempo whenever there was going to be action. The setting, for example the use of rain in the scene after turning down Phyllis conveyed the gloom that fell over Walter. The camera angles of Walter were mostly from the bottom up to portray the fact that for the most of the film he had the upper hand. While seated in Keyes office, giving his confession he was slumped in a chair with the camera pointed down at him in judgment.

Before the movie began there was a small introduction in which it was explained that the adaptation of the movie was a long laborious task. This was because it was not only hard to get some of the contents of the book past censorship but also, any actor worth their salt was afraid to touch the controversial roles that the film had. The political context of the film is shown where the envelope was being pushed, by portraying a woman that was capable of murder and blatantly being unfaithful to her husband. Keyes also made it a point to mention that a lady that Walter might be interested would probably drink straight from a bottle with disgust; a trait that only a certain type of woman would do back in those days, I’m sure. There was also Walter’s surprised look when Phyllis accepted bourbon when he said he was out of champagne. This showed how women were expected to be in that time and how they were thought of if they fell outside of those conventions. There was also the specific mention of the colored woman who cleaned Walter’s house a nod to the segregation and racism that was rampant back then, she didn’t have a name just colored woman, similarly in the book the houseman was referred to as the Filipino. 

There were many similarities and also differences between “The Maltese Falcon” and “Double Indemnity”. One major similarity was the role of the femme fatale, who was instrumental in leading the protagonist down a dark path. There was also the protagonists’ decision at the end to bring her to justice, albeit two totally different methods. The two most notable differences for me were that the detective angle was not as pronounced in “Double Indemnity”. We were also allowed a peek into the protagonists’ thoughts as he narrated the film through his confession.

In class we describe a femme fatale more or less as a beautiful character who leads the protagonist to danger and can end up also betraying the protagonist. In “Double Indemnity” Phyllis definitely fits the role of the femme fatale. She builds up Walter by showing feelings for him and using her beauty and sex appeal to her advantage. Phyllis and Walter go through with the scheme to collect life insurance from the death of her husband and at the end she is ultimately plotting a larger scheme where she would keep all the money for herself. Walter ends up realizing this and confronts her about it. She then ends up shooting Walter in the back. When she realizes she missed she couldn’t shoot again and Walter kills Phyllis. Phyllis fits the femme fatale based on our class definitions because she uses her beauty to lead Walter into the danger of being arrested and at the end betrays him by trying to KILL HIM!!

In the noir film, “Double Indemnity,” Walter Neff is a smart, hard working sales man. Until, he visits his client, Mr. Dietrichson, to remind him that his automobile insurance have to be renew. Instead of Mr. Dietrichson, he meet Phyllis. She is a femme fatale in the film, which is defined as totally attractive and leads the protagonist into danger for what she wants. Phyllis wants Neff to kill her husband so she can get the insurance money. Neff refuses but because his lust for her he agrees to.

In contrast to the “Maltose Falcon,” “Double Indemnity” is more interesting because the film starts with Neff is wounded and he confess in his office. The flashback style of the film give the audiences at glimpse of what happened. It made the audiences want to know what is the story behind it. However, I like Spade better than Neff because lust doesn’t fool Spade and he is slick. He fools his enemies back.