Double Indemnity

The film, Double Indemnity, has been said to be "a film without a single trace of pity or love." This is because the characters in the film have an appearance of love but under the appearance there are very different motives.  The main female character, Phyllis, is married to a man that she says "has no love" for her and treats her like an object.  When Phyllis meets Walter, she already has intentions of getting rid of her husband because she doesn't love him.  This relationship is an illusion of love because neither person cares for the other and they only tolerate each other because it was against social norm to get a divorce.  The couple instead chooses to ignore each other because that was more accepted in this time period than a divorce.  Not only does Phyllis not care for her husband but she says that she feels "trapped" in that he dictates her every action.  In Phyllis's eyes a relationship isn't what she wants unless she has an equal amount or more power than the male.  This wasn't the case with her husband because he controlled what she bought, how she acted, and who she saw.  She therefore sought out a way to get out of her marriage and used manipulation to gain the power she wanted.

In the film, the main characters Phyllis and Walter develop a relationship that they claim is true love within a couple of days. This relationship between the two progresses very quickly and acts rashly with killing the husband.  The time period is an indicator that their relationship doesn't contain love but the power dynamic also proves their relationship was a delusion.  Phyllis uses manipulation to get Walter to help her kill her husband and therefore gains power over him.  Walter has no interest in killing Phyllis's husband until she promises him that they will be together after he is gone. Walter is convinced that Phyllis truly loves him and therefore kills her husband with little convincing.  Their relationship is proven to be false when Walter confronts Phyllis and she shoots him.  Phyllis confesses that "she used him and nothing more" saying that she "never loved him" and only wanted to use his knowledge about insurance.  The only pity that the film does contain is that Phyllis doesn't shoot Walter a second time.  I think that she does this because she feels guilty about involving him in murder and convincing him that she loved him and can't bring herself to kill the man that only tried to help her. Walter however is under the false pretense that they are in love until he finds out that Nino Zachetti has been visiting Phyllis.  When he finds out that she doesn't love him, he flips into the complete opposite of being able to kill her.  I think the point where he plans to kill her is when he realizes that their relationship was just manipulation and that he didn't really love Phyllis.