Double Indemnity Sound analysis

 With reference to a sequence from a film between 1930-1961, analyse how sound is used to generate meaning and responses [10 marks]

- Double Indemnity

Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir 'Double Indemnity' utilises sound during the climactic final scene between the antihero Neff and his detective co-worker Keyes to create an atmosphere of urgency, uncertainty, and tension for the spectator. This is most prominent in the non-diegetic score of instrumental string layered with brass undertones often overshadowing Neff's muffled and breathy dialogue as he hastily attempts to wrap up his confession through the Dictaphone. The spectator is repositioned to sympathise with Neff as he takes a final parting act of altruism through his dialogue: 'Take care of Lola...and Zuchetti', showing sympathy and protection to the man that could easily be framed for Neff's crimes.

The music increases in volume, the high urgent pitch parallel to Neff's realisation at Keyes listening to his confession; their diegetic dialogue strongly juxtaposes as Keyes shows little regard for Neff through his disappointed low-pitched and slow paced dialogue: 'You're all washed up'. Neff becomes  increasingly distressed, the music mirroring in legato rhythm as he plots to to escape America. Most significantly the high pitched string instrumentation reaches a climactic crescendo parallel to Neff's collapse in the doorway leading to an escape route. Keyes diegetically phones the police in offscreen sound, and important narrative action code (Roland Barthes) at foreshadowing Neff's inevitability of failure; a film noir convention. To finalise this narrative, the film's leitmotif enters the scene as Neff takes a cigarette, his diegetic breaths intensifying, and a synchronous sound to the associations the spectator has within this leitmotif; the idea of a 'broken man' as established at the beginning of the film, symbolically concluding its cyclical structure.