In convincing his audience a meek nobody like Walter Neff could ever commit so calculated and cruel a murder, Billy Wilder constructs, through camera work and mise-en-scène, an unfriendly, homogenized environment. He externalizes Neff’s desire to escape this setting early in the film by craning the camera upward and beyond the wounded protagonist’s right shoulder, culminating in a downward glimpse of a “desk pit,” where employees of Pacific All Risk labor their days away. The tables in the pit are perfectly rowed and aligned, completely indiscernible from one another, symbolizing conformity. This angle represents Walter’s point of view, both literally and metaphorically: he looks down upon, even despises, the structure and dehumanized drudgery these desks epitomize, and to which he is a slave. Wilder implements similar imagery in shooting Neff’s office, which consists of stark white, imposing walls adorned only with framed charts and graphs, two identical desks and two names on the door, ultimately suggesting shared rank and identity among salesmen. Walter’s work place, in essence, is an impersonal, no frills world of numbers and facts; it is also a well-oiled machine in which he is only a spinning cog.

This monotony extends beyond his job. Jerry’s Market, one of Walter’s frequent haunts, features alphabetized, neatly tiered vegetable cans and baby food jars, whose labels all face outward, lit under a dull fluorescence characterizing any given supermarket. Walter’s apartment, furthermore, resembles a cheap hotel room, with its gaudy, symmetrical, one-tone couch, matching end tables, matching lamps, and its virtual lack of any personal decoration--except, that is, for a series of 1920s-era sketches depicting boxers in fisticuff stances hanging along the walls. These renderings are Walter’s response to Pacific All Risk’s idea of artwork; they embody a visceral human primitivism, anachronistic in his thoroughly modern, statistical universe. They represent Walter’s most basic desire to trade the insurance business’s detached mechanizations for a heightened sense of masculinity and control--he wants to be those tough-guy mashers on the wall, not a simple, everyday Joe, and he will stop at nothing, even his own good judgment, to obtain that status.

While Walter Neff's boss has the power of his "little man" conscience, Walter Neff is driven by a more demanding influence: his desire to assert masculine authority, and to be the best. Sure, he wants the money, and sure, he wants the woman. But also control! Authority! We see this because he is constantly flaunting his manliness, and director Billy Wilder's work clearly shows that he has this in mind. His film satisfies a perverse desire for Neff to succeed because plays the part of a 1940's "Man's Man."

In the first scenes between Neff and Phyllis, he takes it upon himself to force past the maid into the house, even before he knows the Dietrichsons. And he has no qualms about "speeding past the limit of 45" so fast that Phyllis calls him on it--which is extreme in itself, considering the woman flirtily brags to being "not fully covered," and exudes sex appeal. Headed back to the office, he off-handedly says to a female secretary: "Park this for me, will you sweetheart?" Pure penis! And let's not forget the dialogue he uses with Phyllis: "Not so loud," "Let me talk first," and, our favorite, "Shut up, baby." Constantly calling Phyllis "baby" reiterates that she is inferior to him.

In addition to dialogue, Wilder utilizes certain camera tricks to enhance Neff's power. The camera angles show him above her as often as possible. And when they kiss for the first time, we are behind Phyllis, which amplifies that seeing him is more important. And Neff clutches her shoulders so tight, you'd think she was trying to get away. This signifies the control he has in the relationship.

To contrast Neff and his opponent, in the scene where Neff tries to sell Mr. Dietrichson insurance, even the man's own daughter, Lola, has power over him, as shown in her very vocal disobedience. Meanwhile, Dietrichson lies vulnerably on the couch. And why do we need to know that he "almost made varsity" football in high school? Well, a great man like Walter Neff surely would have made varsity. Just another detail tossed in to subliminally prove that Neff is better.

Remember Keyes' little man? Even though he's never been wrong in 26 years, Neff likes to believe he's bigger. But in the end, no matter how hard they try to keep the conspiracy a secret, it doesn't matter how great Neff is: the little man still won out.




amber brought an orange: walter neff's motivation
response by RIGBY REARDON

Walter Neff is continually overcompensating for an extreme insecurity about his masculinity. The fear that stems from this insecurity is what motivates him. It is important to remember that Neff is the character telling a story that takes up most of the movie. Wilder shows us his story in flashbacks, which are entirely from Neff’s perspective, so the audience sees the protagonist as he sees himself. Therefore if Neff wants to see himself as masculine, smart, and in control, then that’s how he’ll be portrayed on screen. To emphasize the character’s masculinity, Fred MacMurray was cast as Neff. He is at least a head taller than anyone else cast in the film and towers over all of them. With his height, square jaw, and burly stature he is unquestionably the most impressive male figure on the screen.

The way MacMurray portrays Neff also shows his need to overcompensate. The voice MacMurray uses when playing Neff is very low and quick. These elements make him seem both more masculine and more intelligent, because smart guys talk quickly. Edward G. Robinson’s character, Keyes, is a good example of this. He is Neff’s idol and rival in the movie, the man Neff strives to fool and become. Robinson speaks extremely fast, so much so that Walter is still stuck in the subversive position when around him. The difference between the two actors' speech patterns is an important one. While Keyes speaks fast and hard, Neff speaks in a slower rhythm with distinct pauses after every sentence, as if he needs an extra second to think about the next thing he’s going to say. Neff is a more intimidating figure but Keyes still holds an exalted position in his mind. It can be assumed that Neff’s story somewhat improves Keyes because once the film catches up to the present, and Keyes talks to Neff at the end, his fast and confident talk is gone. Along with that, Neff is dying and suddenly doesn’t appear so overpowering and masculine. His voice is a bit higher and his pauses even longer.

In the flashback portion of the movie Neff is always lit as if he’s the most important thing on screen. At times an entire room, such as Neff’s apartment, is dark except the protagonist who is consistently visible in the middle of the darkness. The only exception to this is when Neff is trying to be sneaky and then he’s concealed in darkness. Wilder decides to hide Neff only when he wants to be hidden. While he’s telling the story, Walter Neff’s ego has a tremendous amount of control on the film.




the old ball and chain
response by DUKE CAIN

It was time to settle down for Walter Neff. He had conquered the word of insurance and now it was time to find a wife, to buy a house, and have a few kids. Unfortunately for Neff, not everything worked out as planned. Although these ideas were not spoken, the images in the beginning of Double Indemnity say them just as loud.

The first of such images come as Neff drives up to Dietrichson residence. The flow of life is all around him. The road that was once cracked has been patched with new material. This material is much darker than the road, and the random, branch-like pattern of the repairs is strikingly reminiscent of veins. The veins here are symbols of life, of new blood. Too long has Walter been away from ‘life’ as an insurance salesman. He meets many people but, as Keyes’ paranoia demonstrates, an insurance salesman cannot see people as people, rather as a product or a faceless being. Walter must remove himself from life as most know it. To a good salesman, emotions are a burden.

Seconds later, in front of the Dietrichson house, we see children playing. Walter doesn’t acknowledge them nor do they acknowledge him. The children never occupy any more than the bottom corner of the screen. But they are there, just as they are in the back of Walter’s mind. The subliminal yearning to drop the insurance bit and become a family man intensifies by a small degree. He may walk past them, but he sees them nonetheless and, in the back of his mind, they are always there.

One of the first things that Neff comments on when he sees Phyllis, his love interest, is her anklet. By this time, somewhere in the back of his mind, he has made her his wife and his obsession with the anklet shows that. The notion of ‘the ol’ ball and chain’ is represented with this thing around her ankle. Walter attaches himself to her, imaging himself as the ball, and their supposed love as the chain that connects them. But whereas he sees it as a representation of love, she sees it as a burden. And that separation is what leaves Mr. Neff bleeding from the shoulder and using his lasts breaths to do what any good ‘ball’ would do, to make sure that what he is connected to goes down with him.




aroused by intelligence: walter neff's fascination with himself
response by THE INEFFABLE FRASER 'FUZZY' McGUFFIN

In Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, our fast-talking noir protagonist, Walter Neff, makes his money by running circles around his clients. He’s an insurance salesman, and he’s good at selling fear; Neff rushes clients through the process, smiling sweetly and cooing reassurance in their ears, as if he can stave off death if only they sign on the dotted line. The great irony in the film is that the single client he wrangles on-screen is the one that he throttles, and that scarcely off-screen. . .all for insurance money. He is no more than guaranteeing life and money for himself, and the assurance of insurance simultaneously affirms Dietrichson’s death. But all this clever maneuvering is evidently overridden by the dance between Neff and his counterpart femme fatale, Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson.

Neff’s desire to prove himself is far less evident than the instantaneous attraction he exudes for Phyllis. He states in his “explanation” to co-worker Keyes that he was in it for “money. . .and a woman,” and he ends up with neither. The fact that he does not get either of these obvious, avowed goals indicates that yes, this is a noir film--seldom does anyone get what they thought they wanted--but also that this is not his true motivation for action throughout the movie. He compares himself to the croupier at a roulette wheel; always watching for cheaters until, eventually, the sentry becomes the thief--witnessing all the tricks and then combining them for the perfect crime. Neither truly wants the money; they want to prove that they can succeed where all the others failed, thus establishing that they are more clever than any that have tried. The fatal flaw in this is the people that remain pure--in Neff’s case, Barton Keyes.

In contrast to Neff’s meticulous and almost obsessive planning, Keyes relies on his “little man,” his instincts and sense of right to destroy the seeming of perfection in noir crime. Keyes consciously trusts Neff, but his implicit suspicions play themselves out in his continued investigations into the case, which he relates to Neff. He subconsciously pressures Neff into ultimately confessing; this is almost the dialectic opposite of the usual noir detective with all his ducks in a row, and more closely resembles the noir protagonist who accidentally murders--Keyes accidentally forces his friend the murderer to own up to his crimes. Supposedly, Neff even comes clean in order to clear things up for Keyes, rather than out of a sense of guilt over the murder itself. Neff incidentally gets to relate the full scope of his cleverness while proving that Keyes wasn’t quite as quick as Neff himself.

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