Blade Runner (1982) & Double Indemnity (1944)
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Blade Runner (1982) and Double Indemnity (1944) might at first glance seem to have little in common, the first being a science fiction film about a man who hunts down and kills androids and the other a film about an insurance investigator and a woman who team up to kill her husband for his insurance. Both films derive their power, their style, and their "look" from the same source, the film noir style of the 1940s that developed spontaneously in response to the paranoia and uncertainties of World War II. In the 1940s, the style was used primarily for urban crime dramas, and the style is marked by sharp angles in both the setting and the use of the camera, night scenes, darkness, wet city streets, and sudden violence. The plots center on moral dilemmas, a sense of paranoia that often proves to be justified, the woman as lure for the male, and the male as dupe for the woman. The style is described by one critic in terms of its style rather than its plots: Film noir was itself a system of visual and thematic conventions which were not associated with any specific genre or story formula, but rather with a distinctive cinematic style and a particular historical period (Schatz 112). Schatz's insistence on noting the relationship to a historical period is important because it indicates that film noir was a social, psychological, and aesthetic response to a certain sense of societal angst that developed first in the uncertainties of World War II, a period of world tensions man
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n may or may not recognize him. In this type of film, the protagonist may think he is in control of a situation, but in fact he is never in control. When he is with Phyllis or carrying out her bidding, she is in control. At other times, the swirl of circumstances over which he has no power are in control. As soon as he is committed to the crime, Neff is lost in a sea of uncertainties, coincidences, and growing danger.
Phyllis is the femme fatale who often inhabits the film noir universe, a character type revived to good effect in Body Heat (1981). Wilder has her come down the stairs toward Neff when they first meet, and the fact that she is so much above him in the scene indicates both differences in social standing and her immediate power over him. In Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott makes only cursory use of the woman as illicit lure, though it is no accident that the woman the police detective centers on has a hair-do reminiscent of Joan Crawford in the film noir Mildred Pierce (1945). Blade Runner is a science fiction movie that deliberately evokes the trappings of the forties private eye film and that uses the film noir style as a way of doing this efficiently and effectively. Like the classic film noir, Blade Run
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Los Angeles, Blade Runner, War II, Indemnity Neff, Double Indemnity, Neff Phyllis, II American, Phyllis Dietrich, Phyllis Phyllis, film noir, Ridley Scott, blade runner, double indemnity, science fiction, war ii, world war, film noir style, world war ii, noir style, phyllis cared money, divided loyalties, insurance office, cared money, double indemnity 1944, uncertainties world war,
Approximate Word count = 1698
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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