Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Double Indemnity


Double Indemnity shows a woman named Mrs. Dietrichson and at first she is shown as a housewife. She’s not allowed to make any decisions regarding money, which is one of the factors to her and her husband’s marital problems. We find out that she would rather consider killing someone rather than fix her marriage with her husband. She claims she never loved her husband in the first place, so then why would she want to try and fix things with him?
            We learn that Mrs. Dietrichson did get rid of the first Mrs. Dietrichson, she guilts Neff into helping her. It seems that she loves Neff and wants him to get ride of her husband as quickly as possible, so that she can be with him. We end up later finding out that she never really loved Neff, she was just using him. After the murder has been done, Mrs. Dietrichson becomes even colder. The insurance soon becomes a problem because she would rather risk exposing them and get the money instead of letting it go so that she can be with Neff, but then in the end she shows how truly mean she is when she shoots him.
            Lola Dietrichson is seen as a typical teenaged girl who is in a slight rebellious stage. Her dad doesn’t get her and her step-mom doesn’t like her. Little did we know that Lola has a good reason to think that her step-mom doesn’t like her.  Lola has a boyfriend named Nino, she likes being able to have a man there that she can go to when she’s having hard times. Later on, when Nino and Lola are having problems, Lola runs to Neff.  Just like Mrs. Dietrichson, She is very cold when it comes to Neff.  When Neff asked her what was going on between her and Nino, she got very unpleasant.
            In this film, women are shown as lesser than their significant other. It also shows that women need and want a man that can be there to take care of them no matter what. They need someone there in times of need, and even if there isn’t anything. 

2 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you. I think this is seen in most movies, not only of that time period, but today as well. Every once in a while a film features a strong female lead, but that lead is still usually shown as weak without their male counterpart. For some reason this is the norm, and will probably remain the norm, and that, to me, is pretty sad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "It also shows that women need and want a man that can be there to take care of them no matter what."

    Does it?

    Wasn't Phyllis acting a part to get what she wanted?

    I rather think the man was equally dependent here, going to absurd lengths to be with a woman he loves (but also the money, ha). Phyllis was a mad lady who would have done away with her husband with or without someone to help her.

    ReplyDelete