Despite the presence of most of the conventions of the dominant methods of film-making and story-telling — the impetus towards the resolution of the plot, the diffusion of tension, the circularity of a narrative that resolves all of the problems it encounters, the successful completion of the individual’s quest — these methods do not, in the end, create the most significant contours of the cultural map of film noir. The defining contours of this group of films are the product of that which is abnormal and dissonant. And the dissonances, the sense of disorientation and unease, while frequently present at the level of plot and thematic development are, more importantly perhaps, always a function of the visual style of this group of films. Disequilibrium is the product of a style characterised by unbalanced and disturbing frame compositions, strong contrasts of light and dark, the prevalence of shadows and areas of darkness within the frame, the visual tension created by curious camera angles, and so forth. Moreover, in film noir these strained compositions and angles are not merely embellishments or rhetorical flourishes, but form the semantic substance of the film. The visual dissonances _ that are characteristic of these films are the mark of those ideological contradictions that form the historical context out of which the films are produced.

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.

In Double Indemnity the act of killing the husband serves as the supreme act of violence against family life, and has, in some sense, to be atoned for through the mutual destruction of the lovers in the macabre shoot-out, at the family house, which ends the film. It is perhaps most clear in this movie that the expression of sexuality and the institution of marriage are at odds with one another, and that both pleasure and death lie outside the safe circle of family relations.

Moreover, there is clearly an impetus in film noir to transgress the boundaries of this circle; for the presence of husbands on crutches or in wheelchairs (Double Indemnity, The Lady From Shanghai) suggests that impotence is somehow a normal component of the married state. Other imagery in these films suggests that a routinised boredom and a sense of stifling entrapment are characteristic of marriage. A large birdcage looms in the foreground of the family home in Scarlet Street, separating husband and wife, and the husband hovers uncertainly at the edge of the frame, holding in one hand the paint brushes which signify for him his escape into the fantasy world of his paintings. The family home in Double Indemnity is the place where three people who hate each other spend endlessly bor- ing evenings together. The husband does not merely not notice his wife, he ignores her sexually; so that it is only under Neff’s gaze that her long legs become the focal point of both the room as Neff sees it and the composition of the frame. While Neff looks at her, the husband looks at the insurance papers which function as his own death warrant, in the sense that they are the device through which the lovers plan to benefit from the large insurance payments on his death. Neff is subsequently caught up in the inescapable cycle of desire, death and retribution.