DI - Character (Assessment) Flashcards
His early exchanges with Phyllis are rich with flirtatious double entendre. For example, the early “I’d hate to think of your having a smashed fender or something while you’re not fully covered” as she stands above, covered in only her towel. What does the double entendre mean?
Double meaning.
Neff’s double motivation is apparent but his ultimate conformity and failure to unequivocally carry out the plan is evident from the start. After securing Mr Dietrichson’s unknowing signature on the insurance certificate, he unwittingly ends up giving his daughter ____ a lift into town.
Lola
Neff’s conformist values come through in his paternalistic approach to Lola and even _______, and the guilt is operating well before the act of murder even takes place.
Zachetti
Neff informs us: “It gave me a nasty feeling to be thinking about them with that briefcase right behind my head that had her father’s signature in it’. This neurotic guilt continues to manifest itself in his paranoid conversations with Phyllis in the ___________.
Supermarket
“And yet, Keyes, as I was walking down the street to the drugstore, suddenly it came over me that everything could go wrong. It sounds crazy, Keyes, but it’s true so help me; I couldn’t hear my own _______. It was the walk of a dead man.”
Footsteps
Neff’s friendship with Lola, which almost has conventional paternalistic qualities, once again reveals the essentially conformist soul which resides within him. Lola’s assertion that Phyllis was responsible for her mother’s death provides new dramatic tension creating further suspicion and mistrust between Neff and Phyllis. As these suspicions lead Phyllis to shoot Neff, they hold one another in their symbolic deathly _____.
Embrace
Whether the stony Phyllis softens in this final embrace is questionable:
Phyllis: No, I never love you Walter. Not you or anybody else. I’m _____ to the heart.
Rotten
The character of Phyllis Dietrichson is regarded as one of the archetypal femme fatales. Her character role is to challenge the patriarchal status quo but in her death, we see a misogynistic order re-impose itself.
What does misogynistic mean?
A person who hates women.
Phyllis’s first appearance is one of sexual assertiveness and unconventionality as her appearance in her towel reveals her forwardness and disdain for propriety. Our focus on her partially clothed body is then replaced by the sign of her ___ as she descends the stairway.
Legs
Phyllis’s sexuality is never ______. She may be subject to our voyeuristic gaze but she defiantly stares back.
Passive
Phyllis’s motives may be selfish and materialistic but like Neff, she wishes to rise above conformity of her life. Marriage is a trap which denies her autonomy and which imposes limits on her freedom:
“He’s so mean to me. Everytime I buy a dress or a pair of shoes, he yells his head off. He never lets me go anywhere. He keeps me shut up. He’s always been ____ to me. Even his life insurance goes to that daughter of his. That Lola.”
Mean
We can’t accept Phyllis’s words at face value as they may be subject to her manipulation. Dietrichson may be bad tempered but there is little evidence to support her accusations that he ____ her.
Slaps
After the murder, her composure becomes one of the most significant character contrasts with Neff and dramatically it creates tension and conflict that propels the _______ along
Narrative
Phyllis does meet an end which fulfils the demands of the code and which imposes ____ justice, but her interactions with less than noble men make her characterisation and her plot role more complex than it first appears
Moral
The humorous exchange between Keyes and Gorlopis at the beginning of Double Indemnity establishes Keyes’s investigation zeal from the start. He will clearly be crucial to the plot development as his persistent acumen and _____ acts as the principle obstacle to the success of their fraudulent plans.
Intuition
