First of all I watched 'Double Indemnity' (1944). The film was set in 1938, and the main male protagonist is Walter Neff, an insurance salesman. He meets the femme fatale character, Phyllis Dietrichson, as one of his clients, and they have an affair. Fitting with Film Noir conventions, Phyllis leads the protagonist astray by talking him into an insurance fraud scheme which includes murder of Phyllis's husband. But insurance investigator Barton Keyes becomes suspicious, and Walter Neff gets caught in the end.
Being in black and white and full of themes and conventions of Film Noir, Double Indemnity is a classic of the style. It includes many features that makes it effective, for example the lighting used; there is lined lighting in the house scene from use of venissian blinds - venissian blinds are used multiple times, also in the office. Later in the house scene no lights are in the house - the only light comes from street lamps outside. Also in the office scene, single source lighting is used, a single desk lamp, drawing the attention to that spot and lighting up Walter's face. The close up camera shot shows his sweat, telling the audience he's nervous. Other classic conventions they show are people smoking alot, and indoors. This helped make scenes more mysterious and hidden. Also bad weather was seen a lot, with heavy rain and dull, cloudy weather - this was pathetic fallacy, implying that something bad was happening.
The Femme fatale character is also classic Noir, as she is depicted as beautiful and seductive, with typical blonde hair in a fancy hair do and wearing makeup, as well as classy clothes and jewellery. She also gets Walter to fall for her, and pretends to love him, and has a twisted past being a murderer, killing her current husbands old wife to be with him, and then in the film killing her husband being bored of him and wanting money, so shows her as a golddigger.
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