Looks that kill: Double Indemnity (1944) reimagined in postmodern neo-noir and television

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transformation of the femme fatale figure from classic noir to neo-noir film and to contemporary television. Exploring the reasons for this transformation and its implications yields fresh revelations about the new femme fatale. Using Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the focal point, we examine the intertextual allusions to this classic in two postmodern neo-noir films – Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) and John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) – and in one of Netflix’s earliest original television series, House Of Cards (2013–2018), created by Beau Willimon. In addition, this article queries in what ways these filmic reincarnations offer a revolutionary re-envisioning of the femme fatale figure. Unlike the classic femme fatale, the new femme fatale ‘gets away with murder’, thus posing a monstrous threat to the capitalist and patriarchal economy in which she operates. The subversive potential of these neo-noir films lies in their parodic and witty undercutting of societal norms, especially at the height of today’s #MeToo Movement.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• feminist
• film noir
• femme fatale
• cinema

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The ‘spider woman’ is described as a mythic dark lady or evil seductress who tempts men and brings about their destruction. See Place (1980).

2. Banet-Weiser (2018).

3. Mack-Canty (2004).

4. Mack-Canty (2004, 159).

5. Gill (2007).

6. Banet-Weiser (2018, 153) [citing Gill (2007, 147–166)].

7. Gill and Orgad (2018).

8. ‘Within postfeminism, feminism itself is rendered invisible, but within popular feminism, a version of feminism is spectacularly visible. Unlike postfeminism, popular feminism recognizes gender inequalities – though it finds mainly neoliberal solutions to address these inequalities. Popular feminism recognizes the vulnerability of women in a sexist context, shifting away from the vague “girl power” slogan of postfeminism.’ Banet-Weiser (2018, 154).

9. Grossman (2009).

10. Hanson (2007).

11. Hanson (2007, 17–18).

12. Hanson (2007, 143).

13. Banet-Weiser (2018, 152–153) [citing Gill (2017)].

14. Faludi (1991).

15. Gamble (2006).

16. Gamble (2006).

17. Krutnik (1991).

18. Conard (2007).

19. Tasker (2013).

20. Hanson (2007, XV).

21. Gamble (2006).

22. Gamble (2006).

23. Tasker (2013, 358).

24. Virginia (2002).

25. Gamble (2006).

26. Tasker (2013, 355).

27. Krutnik (1991). ‘Hollywood had largely avoided this type of fiction [noir] during the 1930s because its vicarious treatment of sex and violence was problematic, in the context of the representational restrictions (of the Production, or Hays, Code) bearing upon the cinema at this time.’ In 1943, Paramount sent Joseph Breen of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America a detailed screen treatment of Double Indemnity, which Billy Wilder had prepared with novelist, screenwriter, and film producer Charles Brackett. Breen claimed that the story violated the Production Code, citing its inclusion of ‘murder,’ (illicit) ‘lovers,’ the story’s ‘violent’ nature, as well as the criminal’s ‘confession to the [insurance] agent who withholds information,’ thus characterizing the story as a ‘gross miscarriage of justice.’ Biesen (1995).

28. Genette (1993).

29. Gamble (2006).

30. Although Double Indemnity is shot in black and white, Neff comments on the red goldfish in Dietrichson’s living room. The color reference may be interpreted as a foreshadowing of Dietrichson’s murder.

31. Hanson (2007, 168).

32. Grossman (2009, 113).

33. Gamble (2006).

34. Read (2000) as cited by Lindop (2013).

35. Hanson (2007, 197).

36. Tally (2016)

37. Banet-Weiser (2018).

38. Tally (2016, 61).

39. Frank Underwood’s character was killed off following sexual assault allegations against lead actor Spacey, who has played a pivotal role at the height of the #MeToo Movement. In 2017, the actor was accused by many people of having committed sexual assault and abuse. See Purcell (2018).

40. Gamble (2006). The ‘New Woman’ was a phrase coined by the popular novelist Sarah Grand in 1894 to describe a new generation of women who sought independence and refused the traditional confines of marriage by broadening her experiences without submitting to male domination and demanding full economic independence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Lipiner

Michael Lipiner is currently a PhD candidate in film studies at Bangor University in Wales. His most recent publication is ‘The Grotesque Social Outcast in the Films of Tim Burton’ in Tim Burton’s Bodies: Gothic, Animated, Creaturely and Corporeal (S. Hockenhull and F. Pheasant-Kelly, eds., Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Yael Maurer

Yael Maurer holds a PhD in English Literature from Tel Aviv University. She is the author of The Science Fiction Dimensions of Salman Rushdie (McFarland, 2014). Her most recent publication is ‘Consuming Desire in Under the Skin’, Humanities 9, no. 2: 39, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3390/h9020039.