The women in these films have an allure which they use to gain their ends and which ultimately destroys the men they attract. Walter Neff is the protagonist in Double Indemnity (1944), an insurance salesman who succumbs to the lure of the wife of a client and becomes enmeshed in a murder plot for insurance money. Phyllis Dietrich is used as a sexual lure from the moment she descends the staircase, and the first thing noted about her is the bracelet around her ankle, essentially representing sexual tension, the lure of gold, and an identification of her as belonging to someone else. One of the repeated themes in film noir is obsession--Walter Neff becomes obsessed with Phyllis, just as Phyllis is obsessed with money and leisure and in fact herself. Neff indicates this himself when he says to Phyllis, "I never cared about the money. All I wanted was you." For her part, Phyllis never cared about anything but the money, and she uses Neff in order to get what she wants.

At the same time, the film noir style makes it clear that Neff and n

The director evokes this sense of the past and at the same time counters it by the high-tech elements existing he places within the grit and grime of the city. The police car is a flying vehicle that soars between the huge buildings of the city. Part of the sense of angst in the film derives from the fact that the viewer sees a city of the future which has not solved any of the problems we face today, from air pollution to overcrowding, from social tensions to crime in the streets. This actually links the film closely to film science fiction which, unlike much literary science fiction, sees science as an enemy developing more and more problematic devices and creations and solving fewer and fewer problems. Here as well, the link to the past is significant, again evoking a time when science was less trusted and when