One type of woman is the reliable, trustworthy and loving women, and the other is the femme fatales. Femme fatales are mysterious, double-crossing, gorgeous, and desperate women. Usually, the male has to choose between the correct thing to do or he picks the femme fatale who in return destroys him gets him to commit murder or some other crime of passion. .
A film that was shown in class called Double Indemnity fits many of the noir characteristics, and is recognized as one of the great noir films. Double Indemnity follows a plot that weaves a typically dark and non traditional view of the American home. In the first quarter of the film an insurance salesman by the name of Walter Neff encounters a young housewife named Phyllis Dietrichson. Walter is there to sell car insurance but Phyllis has another idea. Phyllis needs his help to murder her husband and collect his life insurance. Walter seems to recognize Phyllis" plan from the beginning, but he eventually gives in to her because of her beauty. Phyllis being the femme fatale makes it very obvious that she wants to murder her husband and profit from it. She doesn't seem to have emotions, has no remorse, and always seems to have a blank face. During the film she not only kills the mother in the family to marry the husband, but then plots and murders her husband as well. Once Neff and Phyllis have killed her husband, they are bound to each other because of their crime. Through the end of the film, there are constant references of the two criminals who have gotten on a train together by committing the murder. It is stated by another insurance salesman that the murders are on a trolley ride together and the last stop is the cemetery. Phyllis is a problem for Walter Neff once the crime has been committed. He has been sucked in by the femme fatale evil ways and can't get away. Toward the end of the film Walter Neff goes back to Phyllis home, into the low lit living room with horizontal lines of light cutting through the Venetian blinds, to face the femme fatale.