The sense of existential dread, loneliness, and alienation is palpable in Double Indemnity. Part of its power is the near-universality of this experience among humans. We are all sensitive to being on the fringe of our community, and feeling like an outsider — loneliness and isolation are deeply painful experiences. Walter also has this quality about him, but he has created an artificial sense of control and meaning in his life through his job. It is not until he meets Phyllis that something appears to have been awoken in him — his realization that he is not happy, he wants so much more than what he has — and it is just out of his reach.
Walter’s desperate attempts to circumvent his fate only brought him closer to the inevitable conclusion—by killing Phyllis, he finally realizes that what he wanted all along was never there. The tragic irony in Double Indemnity suggests that when we reach too far beyond our means, we are put back in our place. As Keyes puts it so eloquently: “And those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation, they’re alive, they’re packed with drama, with twisted hopes and crooked dreams…” The Dietrichson case is no different — the claim for double indemnity on the accident policy represented Phyllis’ and Walter’s “twisted hopes and crooked dreams.”
As Walter explains in his confession to Keyes, “I did it for money, and for a woman.” At the surface, Walter seems to want money. He is one of the top salesman at the insurance company for which he works, so he is good at what he does. As Keyes points out, however, a salesman’s job is pushing doorbells. Keyes describes the job as a claims man as comparable to being a surgeon, a lawyer, and he sees significant meaning in the work that he does. Walter is resistant to this, as he was just awarded with top salesman, and then Keyes asks him to take a $50 cut in pay, but with the promise of doing great work. This bothers Walter (“I’m a salesman!.. It’d bother anybody.”) Walter has control over his own fate by being a salesman, since his pay is based on how well he does his job and how aggressive he is. And yet, he still strikes a match and lights Keyes’ cigar at a moments notice, alluding that his sense of control in his career and life is an illusion. When Keyes asks him to be his assistant, this represents a loss of control for Walter over his money, therefore his life, and ultimately his fate. Walter is driven by money and success—although there is a woman (Margie) referenced that suggests he may have a girlfriend or love interest, she never appears in the film, and he has an apartment where he lives alone. Walter Neff appears to live an isolated and small existence—this is reinforced by his first meeting with Phyllis, as he gazes hungrily up at her from the foyer. His mind becomes intoxicated by the image of “the anklet” — the anklet potentially represents those things that Walter desires but cannot have for himself. Walter feels that he can “save” her and that he will be able to give her everything that she desires. Yet Walter still views Phyllis as “Baby” — he says he cares about her, but he loves her the same way that a codependent loves – “I love you because I need you.” Phyllis is his ticket out of mediocrity, his chance to become the man that he wants to be. Keyes refers back to Margie a few times while with Neff, stating repeatedly that he believes “she drinks from the bottle.” This is a stark contrast to Phyllis, who is sultry and feminine. We know so little about Margie, but it is clear that she does not play a huge role in Neff’s life, and she may not fit into the same neat boxes that Phyllis, femme fatale, or Lola, “pure innocent virginal” girl do. Ultimately, Walter seems to desire things that he simply cannot achieve in the world that he lives — one without thanks, comfort, freedom, safety, or a happy ending.
In Double Indemnity, we see how marriage, viewed as an organizing and protective institution in society, actually leads to alienation and destruction — Phyllis hates her husband so much she has decided she’d like him dead. She thought she would find safety, be taken care financially and have someone to be nice to her, and yet her attempts to create these things for herself backfired, and she was met again with a situation where the only exit she could see was through death. This could be viewed through a nihilist lens, as Phyllis’ defied tradition as well as societal and moral convention in a desperate effort to take control over her own life, and it led ultimately to the destruction (death) of herself and Walter. She was driven by feeling and instinct, rather than appealing to morality. She attempted to gain control and power in her life through murder and manipulating men including Walter Neff and Nino Zachetti. Phyllis represents the femme fatale archetype, as she appears as a sultry seductress capable of breaking down men’s moral framework, with none of her own — her character is a sharp contrast to more traditional views of femininity in which the ideal woman was a demur, pious and mild-mannered housewife and meant to support the male head of the household. Although the femme fatale archetype is quite far from a feminist icon, I feel that Phyllis’ character echoes the desperate loneliness, longing, and isolation that was so omnipresent for many women who lived with the demands to be pleasant and dutiful housewives during this time period in America and much earlier in history. “My husband never tells me anything,” she tells Walter when they first meet, “I just sit here and knit.” The femme fatale archetype remains problematic, but it does capture how few avenues women have historically had for taking their power in a society that grants them little. Phyllis’ attempts to take control via her sexuality and reach beyond what she had been allotted in her life were essentially futile — thus the conclusion of Double Indemnity weighs heavy. With authority and the same tragic irony that lent certainty to Phyllis’ and Walter Neff’s fate, we are left with no comfort, or a sense that it was all for a greater purpose. Perhaps made to feel how Phyllis and Walter did, Double Indemnity does not lend a sliver of comfort, nor any sense that it was all for a greater purpose. No single caveat, except maybe that Lola and Nino can be together. As Walter states early in his confession to Keyes, “I did it for money and a woman. I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman.” This is how I interpret a nihilistic, or “godless” and meaningless world. I feel that in this way there are nihilistic qualities to Double Indemnity, because Phyllis and Walter are both attempting to stretch beyond their reach towards greater power, and in turn live a better life. Double Indemnity’s conclusion could perhaps be rather crudely distilled down to “Nice try, guy.”
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