Modernism and Blood Melodrama

Modernism challenged dominant values, the economy, mass culture/culture industry, and industrialized dehumanization. Film noir emerged as a result of the collective unconscious in the wake of World War II, questioning the class system, authority, and morality. Therefore, the ideologies of modernism are ingrained in the film noir subgenre, reflecting the shift in the collective mood following the war and the depression. This is demonstrated in Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity through its morally complex characters, the control of point of view, and the film’s grim critique of American modernity.

James Naremore explains that, like modernism, many early films noirs are characterized by “urban landscapes, subjective narration, nonlinear plots, hard-boiled poetry, and misogynistic eroticism” (45), including Double Indemnity. The film is set in both the suburban centrifuge of Los Angeles and it’s downtown centripetal core. The film’s protagonist, Walter Neff, provides the subjective narration. He is recording a confessional retelling of events, which serves as a frame narrative. The story unfolds to spectators as a series of flashbacks, until we are caught up to speed and brought back to present time.

Naremore discusses how the film uses “impressionistic narration”, “the control of point of view”, “’deep’ narrative techniques”, a “stream of consciousness” and a “nonlinear plot” as an implicit critique of “industrial modernity’s sense of progressive or nonrepeatable time”. The very structure of the film noir embodies the ideals of modernism through cinematic techniques and narrative manipulation.

Walter Neff is confronted with a morally complex proposition, and quickly becomes entangled in a murder plot with the femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson. Neff confesses to the recorder that he “killed [Mr. Dietrichson] for money, and for a woman, but [he] didn’t get the money, and [he] didn’t get the woman”. This type of self-serving motivation is typical of the film noir genre, and can be said to reflect the values and moral integrity during the aftermath of the Depression and the War. People were looking out for themselves, as they were no longer confident in the America they once believed in. Greed, selfishness, lust, betrayal, deceit, pessimism, and bitterness poured into the films being generated in these times of darkness and alienation.

The femme fatale is a significant character to consider while comparing modernism and noir, as it is during the noir era that American women are entering the workforce. Men become anxious as the women become more independent and more powerful. The femme fatale archetype is the new woman at the extreme. She is capable of manipulation, betrayal, deception, independence, power, strength, and murder. Naremore asserts that modernism’s growing hostility toward mass culture is often personified in the form of a woman (44). This fictionalized figure hyperbolically symbolizes and reflects the male anxieties experienced upon returning from the war.

It is evident that there is a link between modernism and noir as they both developed in response to the Depression and the War in order to communicate the collective uncertainty and pessimism toward America, and effectively critique the overwhelming modern industry/mass culture through the tone, characters, and themes of these films.