With the increasing size of corporations, the growth of monopolies and the accelerated elimination of small businesses it became increasingly hard for even the petit bourgeoisie to continue to believe in certain dominant myths. Foremost among these was the dream of equality of opportunity in business, and of the God-given right of every man to be his own boss. Increasingly, the petit bourgeoisie were forced into selling their labour and working for the big companies, instead of running their own businesses and working ‘for themselves’. It is this factor of being forced to work according to the goals and purposes formulated by someone else which accounts in large measure for the feelings of alienation and helplessness in film noir.

It is no accident that Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944) seeks an escape from the dull routine of the insurance company that he works for, in an affair with the deadly and exotic Phyllis Dietrichson. The possession of Dietrichson, as of any of the other film noir women who function as sexual commodities, is, in the magic world of the movies, held up as a tempting means of escape from the boredom and frustration of a routinised and alienated existence. Nor is it accidental that Neff, on his way up to his office to make his final confession, encounters the elevator man who tells him that he never could buy medical insurance from the company that he has worked for all of his life, because he has a bad heart. It is this feeling of being lost in a world of corporate values (represented in different films by big business, the police, the mob etc.) that are not sensitive to the needs and desires of the individual, that permeates film noir.