Double Indemnity

[mariness]

So I finally got around to watching Double Indemnity last night. I know, I know. I'm not sure how I missed seeing this film, but somehow I did

Comments

[cardinalximinez]

One of ours threw up today on the vinyl laundry room floor. I will probably remember this event for months.

[mariness]

That would still be easier to clean than this particular bedspread, which is more than 30 years old and not easily washed :(

[cardinalximinez]

That's what I mean. It was unusual, and therefore memorable, because she finally did it somewhere that it would be easy to clean up.

[jackolantern]

WRT the smoking, it's hard to tell just how accurate that was. On the one hand, you had a certain amount of product placement going on with the tobacco companies (Fatima cigarettes sponsored the Dragnet radio show, and although I don't know if they still sponsored the TV show, Joe Friday and his partner lit up an awful lot); on the other, I'm just old enough to remember much more relaxed attitudes toward smoking. When I was in a group home for teenagers in the mid-seventies, the kids could buy cigarettes with their allowance money, which they usually did at a local bar.

[mariness]

I don't know if it's an actual portrayal of smoking levels in LA at the time or not, but what I noted was that no Hollywood film these days would ever feature that many characters chain smoking. One or two, possibly. But think of it - the only chain smoker on TV that I can think of right now is Michael's mother over on Burn Notice, and not only is she the only chain smoker, she's the only smoker, period, and everyone keeps trying to get her to stop.

In Double Indemnity, in contrast, far from saying a single word against smoking, everyone is going around lighting up one another's cigarettes, or eagerly going to fetch cigars or matches or whatever, over and over. I just can't see this happening in today's movies/TV.

I didn't see any brand names, so I'm not sure the cigarette smoking here was product placement.

The Infermal Sot Weed

[phylee]

A lot of the smoking interactions in the older movies was of a subtle sexual nature. This is a case where the cigar was "more than a cigar." Even then chain smoking was recognized as a sign of high stress. Therefore, the chain smokers in the scenes "have something to hide or worry about." Also, cigarette smoking was oficially encouraged as early as WWI as a way of chemically calming people down. The Allied Powers poured cheap cigarettes into the trenches of WWI to keep the troops "comfortably numb." I can remember as a child in the early sixties being in rooms full of adults who were all smoking. Secondhand smoke wasn't even an issue. My favorite take on all this is a passage in one of Arthur C Clarkes books where he has a pair of characters make their fortune devising a computer program that eliminates all traces of smoking from old movies! In fact, as you mentioned earlier, sometines the smoking was part of the plot! Bye.