Walter Neff: Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money — and a woman — and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?
If I had a villain origin story, this film would’ve been the start of it.
I was handed a DVD of Billy Wilder’s 1944 film, Double Indemnity, during middle school from a family friend. We met with him once or twice a year, and each time, like it was Christmas, a stack of old Hollywood films would come with him and I adored him for it. He couldn’t have known that this film would spark my unhealthy obsession with film (and film noir) and actresses in “strong” female roles, but here we are.
In this film, Phyllis Dietrichson, a seductive housewife, convinces an insurance agent to commit insurance fraud and murder her husband. When I finished watching it, I knew that this was my favorite film of all time. And no matter what other movies I saw, Barbara Stanwyck was the strongest woman I had ever seen. I wanted to be her so badly I could hardly stand it.
For some context as to the history of Double Indemnity’s genre, film noir is, figuratively and quite literally, one of the darkest genres that has graced the silver screen of Hollywood. Coming out of World War II, Hollywood took a large step in a dark direction and embraced the genre of “film noir,” heavily influenced by German Expressionism and characterized by morally ambiguous characters and plots that didn’t have happy endings; the audiences of noir films watched as the semi-realistic world on screen confronted the more sinister side of life.
So, in all this, what drew me to the character of Phyllis? What made her character so different to the women I had watched in movies before? Was it because she was seductive, because she embraced her sexuality and used it to her advantage, because she handled the men in her life like they were nothing? She existed in a world that was made for men, and she knew the power she had over them and used them to get what she wanted. It was her world.
After watching far too many movies that had “strong” women in it, women that had agency but were nice girls, knew where they belonged and how to act, and were willing to be bent into the convoluted shape of the demure possession in the heterosexual American Dream, this was what I needed. I was reeling over the discovery of a woman who knew all of these things, and knew how to get where she wanted through them. As per the usual state of affairs, her character is supposed to represent evil and the danger of the emancipated woman of the era, and she is killed at the end of the movie.
But that didn’t matter. I knew she had existed. And I knew that there must be more of them out there. More Phyllis Dietrichsons, more Barbara Stanwycks; more women that went against formal standards of female beauty, mannerisms, and ideals.
The first step to becoming an evil, angry feminist villain had been taken.
Next: Laura
