Kay Scheffler

The Effect of the Point of View in Double Indemnity, Novel and Screenplay: A Comparison Kay Scheffler

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Würzburg (Neuphilologisches Institut), course: Film Noir and Literature (Hauptseminar), language: English, comment: From 5.1 onwards, the individual chapters are becoming briefer and less substantial. You fail to discuss which of the differences between novel and film are due to the different media and which are deliberate. Still, a very interesting analysis, with one major flaw: You ought to have adressed the "flashback technique" of the film and the resulting subjectivity of the version of events rendered within the flashbacks. Hence (only) 1.3 , abstract: In 1927, a woman named Ruth Snyder and a man named Judd Gray were sentenced to death by the electric chair, because they murdered the husband of Ruth, Albert Snyder. They murdered him for a 48,000$ life insurance with a double indemnity clause in it. Both of them also had an affair before they decided to murder Ruth's husband. Judd Gray was a corset salesman. Present to the trial was James M. Cain, at that time working as a reporter. Many believe that this case gave Cain the idea for one of his most famous novels, Double Indemnity. Several signs lead to that conclusion. First of all Ruth was unhappily married and began an affair with a salesman. Secondly her husband had already been married once, before he married Ruth, but his first wife died of pneumonia. Furthermore, the two of them had a daughter named Lorraine, who shares the same first two letters in her name with the Lola in Double Indemnity, daughter of Mr. and Ms. Nirdlinger. Moreover Ruth's husband was killed for the money of his life insurance, which contained a double indemnity clause. And last but not least they tried to disguise the murder as an accident, to collect on the double indemnity (see www.examiner.com). Many say that Double Indemnity was one of Cain's masterpieces, and it was made into a movie, which was named