Blog Seven

How do both of these writers use the landscape of Los Angeles in their stories?  Do these stories create a distinct sense of place?  Do they create an environment that distinguishes it from other places?  In other words, have the writers given readers a good description of what one would experience in those different locations?

Both of the writers use landscapes of Los Angele's in their stories. In the story "The Kidnapper Bell" starts off with a description o the L.A. River "Change flows swiftly through L.A. like the shallow river that cuts into downtown on its way to the ocean but in Los Angele's there are pockets, tiny whirlpools  eddying in the stream, where change cannot reach pg(209). It talks about a bar in  Chinatown, which is located near downtown L.A. The story makes a comment "He knew so much about the river, more than most Angelenos pg(212). Angelneos is a another word used to say your from and proud to be from Los Angeles.  The story also talks about Los Angeles transit system it states on page 212 "She tells him the MTA uses this defunct Southern Pacific structure as a place to store their spare light rail train cars.. To him it looks like an abandoned factory. The story names different cities in Los Angeles like Echo Park, San Fernando.

In the second story " City Of Commerce" it gives use more and creates a more distinct sense of place. In the novel it states " Admissions of love came less and less frequently from her these days, not that i blamed her. One minute she was at a Santa Monica  beach party getting  felt up in a hammock.......she found herself paying the mortgage on a two-bedroom condo in Glassel Park..... pg(229) Santa Monica a famous place in L.A. for its beach and high class living. The novel talks about L.A. freeways it states "I prepared for my meeting, in my mind, as I whipped the Acura down the 110,and I-5 as i moved through Downtown,.......pg(231). The makes a comment about "The landscape grew generic, sooty, industrial, less definitively L.A. to the casual observer. The novel mentions a famous University in Los Angeles   UCLA on page233.  It also mentions Walgreens a drug store you can find in every city of Los Angeles on page 238. The novel also mention A another city in L.A. Gardena one of the nicer cities to live in L.A. on page 240.

Blog#5

Reading the article did cause me to reconsider certain aspects of the film and novel. In the article " I Love you Too; Sexual Warfare and Homoeroticism in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity by Brain Gallagher suggest that Keyes and Walter have more then just a man friendship. It suggest that they are more then just two friends working together an that Keyes and Walter were closer. At first I viewed Keyes and Walter relationship as a father and son tough love bond. That if Walter was caught between a twisted love affair with Phyllis and Keyes and that if Keyes really wanted Walter. Now at first I thought O no it can't be like that but after reading the novel and watching the film a start putting two and two together with different scenes and parts of both film and novel. In more then one scene Walter tells Keyes that he loved him and how Walter would keep lighting Keyes cigars. And even when Keyes finds out what really happen doesn't just feed Walter to the dogs.  Other insights that I gained reading this article is how some of the characters roles are so different in the film and novel. How Phyllis role in the film is not as cold hearted and ruthless as it is in the novel. The novel tells it all, all the people she had really murder and how careless she really was and her disregard for one's life. In the novel she killed to get what she wanted and when it boiled down to it, it was money. She killed her  husband's first wife for money she wanted to inherit cause the wife was next in line and then she killed the three little kids. And then he murders her husband for his insurance money. Then turns on Walter and wants him dead and try's to kill him by shooting him. But in the film Phyllis is made to seem in a away trying to get out of a marriage because her husband mistreats her and slaps her around when he drinks, so she wants him dead. And when she double crosses Walter in the film makes it seem like she can't shoot him a second time because she did really love him. For the novel I'm not encouraged to challenge any of the author's conclusion because I liked the novel ending better than the films ending.

Blog #4

For the zero draft questions I pick question #1 for my blog. Discuss the contrasts between the endings of the novel and the film. Which ending seems more appropriate for film noir? Why?

The contrast between the ending of the novel and film are two different endings. In the novel the ending leaves you with your own imagination to figure out what happens. Phyllis ends up shooting Walter putting him in the hospital and then Walter confessing to Keyes that he was the one that killed Mr. Nirdinger . Walter convinces Keyes to give him time to flee to Mexico to get way from what he had done. Walter ends up going on the ship and by no surprise he is join by Phyllis " I heard a little gasp beside me. Before I even looked I knew who it was. I turned to the next chair. It was Phyllis."You." Walter then finds out from Phyllis that Lola and Nino gets married and Keyes gives her away. Also at the novel it ends up coming out what Phyllis and Walter had done, Phyllis states " Yes. It all came out. It's a good thing we're under different names here. I saw all the passengers reading about it at lunch. It's a sensation."pg(113) Phyllis wasn't bother by it,she called it a sensation, how is committing murder a sensation when people find out. In the novel Phyllis is made out to be this cold hear ted killer with no remorse. Walter states " She smiled then, the sweetest,saddest smile you ever saw. I thought of the five patients, the three little children, Mrs Nirdlinger, Nirdlinger, and myself. It didn't seem possible that anybody that could be as nice as she was when she wanted to be, could have done those things."pg(113)   In the novel Phyllis is true definitions of a femme fatale, She was mysterious, gorgeous, manipulative and double crossing. She manipulated Walter into killing her husband, and he felt like he was doing it for her and she used her gorgeousness to get him. When she feels like she has no use for him anymore double crosses him by shooting and trying to kill him.But at the end of the novel it ends the same for the both of them death.
     In the film the end plays back to the beginning when Walter is confessing to Keyes in his office on a recorder what happen. Walter in the film at the end shoots and kills Phyllis after she shoots him. Phyllis doesn't try to take another shoot because she ends up telling him that she loved him. Also in the film Walter changes his mind about setting up Nino to take the fall for killing Phyllis. Keyes ends up coming to the office because Walter left a blood trail and here's what Walter is confessing on the recorder. Walter asks for Keyes to give him time to leave and Keys response with he'll never make it. As soon as Walter gets out the office he ends up collapsing to the ground and Keys lights him a cigarette. The film ending fits more into a film noir because it didn't really leave nothing to the imagination, you knew that Walter was going to die from his gone shot wound. Phyllis was dead and Walter was going to die and it seemed they both got what was coming to them. There love was doomed from the beginning and unhealthy. After what Walter did he felt trapped by his surroundings.The film started off with being told with flashbacks and voice over narration.

  And for question #2 I picked
During the title sequence, a man on crutches hobbles towards the camera. Explain the significance of this image. Who in the does this man represent? Why would this be an appropriate image to show at the beginning of the film? How does this sequence anticipate later developments in the film? Walter represent the man on crutches. Because in the film he takes on the role of Mr.Nirdlinger when he going to kill him. Mr. nirdlinger is on crutches in the film when he breaks his leg and has to catch the train to his class reunion back he doesn't even make it on the train. So when Walter and Phyllis is plotting his murder and Mr. Nirdlinger broke his leg, Walter was going to have to be on crutches to  play that role when he got on the train to play Mr. Nirdlinger. Mr. Nirdlinger ends up getting killed over scheme plot to collect his insurance money from his accidental insurance he knew nothing about.Walter takes on the role of Mr. Nirdlinger and ends up dieing after he is shoot by Phyllis who was his partner in crime. Mr. Nirdlinger was Phyllis pattern in marriage and she turns on him having him murder. Walter took on the role of Mr. Nirdlinger and ended up in the same boat as Mr. Nirdlinger, Walter was betrayed by his partner to and dies.




 

1. As we will see when we view the film, the ending of the novel is quite different from the movie.  Discuss the appropriateness of the novel’s conclusion.  Do you feel that the ending is satisfying, or do you feel that Walter and Phyllis should receive different treatment?  Why do you think that the screenwriters Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder changed Cain’s ending?

 Well I thought that the novel was going to end with Phyllis and Walter going to jail for the murder of her husband. But to have it all turn around with Walter deciding that the world wasn't big enough for him and Phyllis and wants to kill her because he doesn't want to deal with her having the murder of her husband over his head. And because he thought Phyllis was seeing Schetti and they were lovers he wanted him dead because Walter felt like he must been in  on it too. But to find out that Schetti was really trying to get close to Phyllis over the murders in his family he felt like she had something to do with. But when Walter had Phyllis meet up with him to kill her and she ends up shooting him, and keys visits him in the hospital it all comes out. In the film Walter goes into the office on the recorder and confesses s what he had done and what his involvement was in the murder for the insurance money.  In the novel Walter tells keys everything about what happen and instead of Keys turning him in, tires to get Walter to set up Phyllis now everybody is corrupt. And Keys doesn't want his company to have this kind of negative attention with his company insurance agent being involved in a murder plot for the insurance money. In the novel Keys is much nicer to Walter and acts more of a friend then in the film.

In the novel it come out to be how much of a femme fatale Phyllis is and how easy it is for her to commit murder and play that innocent role. In the film she made it seem that her husband was mean to her and how he didn't show her any attention and when he gets drunk her slap her around. In the novel it came out that she had killed his wife when the wife and her went away for the weekend and the first  Mrs. Nirdlinger  dies from Pneumonia and so does three other's in the novel that cross Phyllis path. In the novel Phyllis has no remorse for all the murders she has committed and is only concern with herself.  In the film and the novel the fatalism relationship between Walter and Phyllis is about the same. But Walter felt like he was doing this for her and to get her, and for Phyllis her attraction for Walter was all in her plan.   

At the end of the novel Walter is on a ship passing the coast of Mexico and Phyllis end up right next to him. After all that happen with Phyllis shooting Walter now she's on the ship talking about getting  married. But Walter does let her know that there's nothing ahead of them. 

 I like the end of the novel because I didn't want Walter to die or get in trouble for what he had did. I believe Phyllis should have went to jail or died. for all her evilness and doings. I believed the ending was changed because in the novel it wanted to give Walter a chance to redemption.  

Noir vs. Not

Double Indemnity fits right into the film noir. It had that weird, erotic, ambivalent and cruel qualities of film noir. The character playing the insurance agent selling polices for accidental insurance kind of takes on the role of rotten police featured in film noirs. The character is suppose to be selling insurance  but instead plotting against and trying to scam the one company he works for. In which is entrapment trying  to take money with in your own company. From the website Flimsite states " An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything  can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment are stylized characteristics of film noir"  In the novel Double Indemnity , Walter states "Money" " Your mean you would-betray your company, and help me do this, for  me, and the money we could get out of it?" His character was in for it for the money and i feel Ms.Nirdlinger going to be his fall man. Mrs. Nirdlinger fits and takes on the role as the femme. Also from the website Filmsite states that " Very often, a film noir story was developed around a male character, who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous and seductive femme fatale..." The novel compares to a film noir because it fits the plot of a film noir, the novel is developed around a male which is Mr. Walter and Mrs. Nirdlinger being the promiscuous seductive e femme that falls for Walter, and set up a murder plot. Double Indemnity fits the qualities of a  role film noir because of it's weird,erotic, and cruel plot.Walter thinks he has the perfect plan and later in the novel it's starts to unfold.The insurance company starts to take the law in it's own hands when Mr. Keys starts to see Mr. Nirdlinger death as a suicide and then a murder. Instead of reporting it to the police Mr. Keys and Mr. Norton is going to handled it by getting Mrs. Nirdlinger to sue them for them to pay her. Mr. keys was trying to make Mr. Nirdlinger death to look like a suicide instead of an accident so that the company wouldn't have to pay on Mr. Nirdlinger policy. But starts to aspect that it was murder and Ms. Nirdlinger has someone working with her, this falls into the corruption side of film noirs. The novel has that unknown twist to it  especially the relationship with Walter and Mrs. Nirdlinger. Paul Shrader states in the article "Note on Film Noir" " Finally, there is ambiguity surrounding the woman: the femme fatale who is fatal to herself. Frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet ensnared, she falls victim to her own traps....."  When Walter visits Mrs. Nirdlinger and lets her know what Keys and Norton were up to she wants to back out and not even sue, then aske Walter if he stilled loved her and did think about her all the time, playing that seductive role of a film noir. Also in the novel Walter is having mixed feelings about what happen and states " I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in he power, so there was one person in the world that could point a finger at me, and I never wanted to see her as long as I lived."Walter also states that he loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake. I'm taking this as he is really in it for the money and she is going to play the fall guy.

90s noir

1.      In the article, Chris Pula of Warner Bros provides the following statement “’the bulk of the audience who enjoys film noir are directors, film students, critics, and the most ardent, generally upscale film enthusiast.’”   In addition, most noir films that Ansen discusses are independent films rather than big-budget studio blockbusters.  Why does noir seem to appeal to a limited audience today instead of enjoying a wider following?

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Why the noir seems to appear to a limited of audience today is that because back then there were limitations to what you could do with a movie. For one the noir films are in black or white which makes it kind of boring. Back  then in films  you were only expose to so much then how it is today. In noir films there were corruption, murder, gun play and but  still kept a classic style. Now days with all these elements it's more action and drama and suspens. Most noir films are based on white people and for the enjoyment of whites and now days we have such a wider diversity of  cultures. And films now days reach out more to wider audience of different cultures. Then just being in black and white and about just whites. Noir films open the doors to film and will always be liked by some. But the world has changed in so many different ways making films produced now day so much enjoyable and better to watch. Noir films were about things that were happening durning that time to where now so much is diffenernt. Noir films dealt with the issues we had back then. Films produced now are a wider version of what life is like today.

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