“Double Indemnity” is a classic 40’s film noir that sets the tone for the whole genre. The film is about Walter Neff, an insurance salesman and a married woman who seemingly fall in love, and for love and money kill the woman’s husband. But as the movie unfolds, it becomes clear this is much more than a dark love story where two soulmates murder a bad man in order to be together. We learn towards the end of the film that Phyllis Deitrichson, the lead woman and classic femme fatale, never loved Walter at all but was merely bored, selfish, and amoral, craving more money and power than she could ever achieve in her marriage (especially in the 40’s). She played Walter, probably knowing that being an insurance man he’d know better than anyone how to kill her husband, make it look like an accident, and get money out of the insurance company. Yet all does not go according to plan when Walter’s boss and friend Keyes takes an interest in the case. Keyes is the film’s living embodiment of justice and following the rules, and as soon as he senses something isn’t quite right in the Deitrichson case, Walter knows they are in trouble. From spending time with Phyllis’s step daughter he learns more about Phyllis and begins doubting her. It is insinuated that Phyllis killed her husband’s previous wife to be with him, and now has gotten Walter to kill her husband to get the insurance money. His doubts are solidified when Keyes is sure he has found the man that helped her commit the murder of her husband; not Walter, but rather her step daughter’s ex-boyfriend Nino who has been seen meeting Phyllis at her house night after night. Walter clearly feels betrayed and angry, and by this point any sense of right and wrong he may have had is out the window. He goes to Phyllis’s house, tells her he knows everything and that he’ll be off the hook because Keyes already believes she and Nino killed her husband. But Phyllis shoots him, he gets the gun from her, and kills her.
Nihilism is the rejection of all religious and moral principles in belief that there is no meaning in life. “Double Indemnity” is the perfect nihilistic film. The two main characters reject all conventional moral principles in order to get what they want. For Walter it’s money and lust, for Phyllis, it’s money and power. For Walter, it seems as if he struggles against braking conventional morals. He is angry the first time he guesses that Phyllis wants to kill her husband for money, he says he’d never do such a thing and storms out. But eventually his attachment to what’s right and wrong fades and he agrees to help her. Phyllis on the other hand seems to be a nihilist from the start. Although she doesn’t explicitly say it, we can presume from that first scene with her that she doesn’t care for her husband, she plays to Walter’s lust and uses him to get what she wants.
Fate is another important theme of the film; right at the beginning we see Walter, clutching his coat to cover his wound, make his way to his office in the middle of the night, and begin recording a confession of all the wrong he has done. This sets up the theme of fate, because there is no hope that it could end well. His fate is already sealed from the first scene. The two desperately try to escape their fate but by the end Walter has come to know and accept it. It’s like Keyes tells him, “they’ve committed a murder, and it’s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” They’re fate was sealed the minute they agreed to kill Mr. Deitrichson, or arguably, the minute they met. Walter’s paranoia grows as the movie progresses because he is starting to understand there is no other way it could end. This is why he kills her at the end of the movie. Certainly anger and revenge play a role in it, but he knows even if the frame of Phyllis and Nino works, his fate will still catch up with him. While her shot at him left him badly wounded and not dead, it is still that shot that prevented him from escaping to Mexico and causes him to collapse on the floor of his office. Her shot killed him, and he killed her. Keyes was right; they were stuck on that trolley, and the last stop was the cemetery.
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Dramamine 