Characters who had been righteous, stable, and paragons of responsibility all their adult lives were seamlessly and quite believably transformed in a few seconds into
reckless, dangerous, and even murderous types, all suggesting that anyone, in the right or wrong circumstances, was capable of almost anything and that one’s own sincere
avowals of one’s own basic principles could be ludicrously self-deceived.
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2.7 Film and Storyline Variations in Depicting Societal Problems
Like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice also uses voiceover narration. The story also resembles Double Indemnity, in that when the male protagonist
Frank Chambers played by John Garfield first gets a look at the bare legs of the femme fetale Cora Smith played by Lana Turner, he becomes infatuated with her, which eventually
leads to them killing Cora’s older husband, Nick Smith played by Cecil Kellaway. This film has many of the characteristics of a typical noir movie of the WWII era like the storyline, the
doomed and alienated antihero, the femme fetale who meets her own demise for her bad behavior, and a scheme to commit a crime that eventually backfires on them when Cora is
killed and Frank is imprisoned. This film also rejects traditional concepts about morality and has a strong degree of pessimism. The flashbacks are also combined with the voiceover
narration. The non-traditional narrations are obvious in many noir films. For example, in The
Postman Always Rings Twice flashbacks are used to tell the story. Next, in The Big Sleep the plot is sometimes confusing as many characters are involved in various subplots that do not
seem to be interrelated at first. Also, the way the characters act and what motivates them seem to be illogical to how most people would act. This is seen in The Postman Always Rings
Twice when Frank and Cora fail to kill Nick the first time as he recovers in the hospital and is sent home, and they try to kill Nick a second time, not considering the risk involved in being
found out by the District Attorney. Besides that, Frank is very easily taken in with Cora as
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Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 2012, p.7.
when he first meets her in the diner, he is immediately infatuated with her and kisses her, knowing that her husband is in the next room.
The pessimism found in noir movies can be traced to the hard-boiled literary works that preceded the films. Many noir movies that are not based on particular crimedetective
stories still borrow from the mood and style found within them. The hard-boiled style is often apparent in the beginning of the story as in the beginning of the novel Strangers on a Train
1950, which was later turned into a noir film by Patricia Highsmith. The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller
and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible. The prairie only undulated, like a
vast, pink-tan blanket being casually shaken. The faster the train went, the more buoyant and taunting the undulations.
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Or classic writers like James M. Cain would write their novels in a short non-descript style with a 1
st
-person narrative in a reporting form. These writing styles would be carried over into the film versions in a more extreme and exaggerated manner in conveying the tone
and mood of the novels and short stories. Therefore, the existential outlook on life and mood is primarily transferred from the literary works to the films, while the filmmaking techniques
are extensions to heighten the mood and tone in noir films. Double Indemnity is a unique film in starting the film noir movement in several ways.
Although it contains no explicit sex or violence, it defies the PCA in at least three ways, which were spelled out by the Breen Office in a March 15, 1943, report to
Paramount: first, it depicts an attractive pair of murderers who cheat the law and die at their own hands; second, it deals ‘improperly’ with the theme of adultery; and third, it
is replete with explicit details of the planning of a murder.
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In analyzing the character of Walter Neff, he is portrayed as someone who is obsessed with sex and money, as he is easily manipulated by Phyllis Dietrichson. In addition, Walter
Neff is seen to be not very clever, dependent, and lacking heroic qualities. In this film and
86
Highsmith, Patricia. Strangers on a Train. USA: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001, p.1.
87
Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2008, p.82.
others of the type, they offer a negative view of modernization and industrialization. The characters are seen as lacking humanity and their surrounding environment supports this with
a lack of human feeling in the props used in the settings. It creates more of a lifeless and cold environment. For example, in Walter Neff’s office, the only decorations are just statistical
charts related to the business; there is nothing there to reveal what the insurance company agents are like on the inside or details about their personal lives. Even Walter’s apartment has
a cold and detached feeling to it with no decorations anywhere. It is almost like he does not really live there.
The correlation with social problems and noir can be seen in Chandler’s novel Farewell, My Lovely 1940 and its screen adaptation Murder, My Sweet. Here Chandler
shows how an ex-convict named Moose Malloy kills a black man in a bar with all black patrons in LA. The police do not seem to care about the case, because a black man is killed.
Philip Marlowe realizes that blacks do not hold the same standing in society as whites. Later in the novel many white people are killed, so that the black person killed initially is forgotten.
Chandler does this intentionally to show that you have to pay for justice. Black people live in a lower-class neighborhood and do not have as much financial pull as white people; this
makes their livelihood not as important. However, crime is actually found all over. This is considered as being more of a social realist type of film for the time it was made.
In defining film noir, Broe believes it arose due to middle-class anxiety over increasing corporatization. He states that “film noir denotes the moment in the history of the
crime film where ideas of the left dominated and, for a brief moment, dictated the structure of the genre. This left hegemony, in one genre of the culture industry for one short period 1945-
1950, represented on the screen the coming together of a dominant bloc of working – and middle-class interests.”
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Noir’s alienated characters act out antisocial urges shared by their audiences. These characters – amnesiacs, ephebes, cynical men on the make, convicts, feckless
adventurers, gullible youngsters, detectives enticed by mysterious women, gangsters and thieves, traumatized veterans, female professors, boxers – become sites where
anxieties about identity, class, agency, individualism technology, consumerism, race, gender, and trauma are played out, thereby reflecting and shaping the consciousness
of a culture.
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In essence, Osteen claims that noir films enabled issues to be brought to the forefront of a society in transition.
Osteen goes further by showing the correlation between dreams and films. He claims that “If films are dreams, so dreams are often films.”
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He elaborates further by stating that some cinematic dreams are mise en abyme: dreams within a movie that allude to other movie
dreams.
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Vicky Lebeau notes, “Because dreams inevitably partake of the culture at large, dream theory supports a psychoanalytical study of culture.”
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Osteen believes this perspective applies to noir films, because they often deal with bad dreams. Therefore, psychiatrists and
psychoanalysts are often found in these films. This can also represent the real-life psychological problems veterans had in readjusting with society after the war and the
psychological traumas and turmoil they had to endure. Osteen states that various noir films want the viewers to examine characters as dreamers and analysts in a psychological
perspective. Disabilities and trauma are also themes found in noir that parallel the real-life
disabilities and emotional traumas experienced by WWII veterans. In Murder, My Sweet,
88
Broe, Dennis. Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2009, p.31.
89
Osteen, Mark. Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012, p.15.
90
Ibid, p.21.
91
Ibid, p.21.
92
Ibid, p.21.
Philip Marlowe is temporarily blind, which can signify his moral flaws. He is unable to realize that Velma Valento has turned herself into the wealthy Helen Grayle. A common noir
narrative for detectives is that of a quest for truth and identity. Marlow pursues Velma which symbolizes his own search to discover himself by encountering alter egos like Moose Mallow
and Lindsay Marriott. This is similar with American veterans who are emotionally or physically scarred trying to find themselves and reestablish their masculinity after the war
and reestablish their places in society. Another aspect of noir that is occasionally present is that of a drifter. These films were
made mostly around the end of World War II and generally involve gambling. In The Postman Always Rings Twice, the protagonist character is a drifter who comes into town and
gets involved with the power structure there. Related with the societal situation at the time, this film depicts class conflicts as the protagonist represents the working class, and the power
structure represents the upper class. “With their protagonist on the outside looking in, these films present highly charged class conflict, since the disparity between the protagonist and his
or her wealthy patron or opponent or patron revealed to be an opponent, whose riches have often been acquired illegally, forms the central and very explicit tension of the film.”
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Usually the protagonist commits a crime because of desperation, while the upper class foe of the protagonist engages in criminal actions to make a profit.
2.8 Noir Detective Stories
