During the Golden Age of Hollywood, burgeoning writers-turned-directors were keen on finding new ways of portraying a character's thoughts for their audiences . Although eager to produce a new wave of storytelling through their work, the filmmakers faced government restrictions relating to the blacklist and the Hays Code. With these restrictions held in place with an iron fist, topics of sexuality and violence were seen as suspect and not openly accepted. Faced with this dilemma and the desire to break the politically correct standards in place, filmmakers have been forced to discover new ways to tell their stories and represent their visions without being disdained. This battle continued to be an uphill battle for storytelling until 1966, when the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system emerged, eschewing the restriction on explicit acts of sex and violence from reaching the big screen. With this new emancipation, the way film noir was portrayed changed forever and finally allowed filmmakers to pave their new cinematic path that would both entice and frighten the world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Noir, a term coined by French film critics of the 1940s, saw its heyday long ago, but that didn't stop the infamous cynicism, erotica and hard-boiled dialogues gave birth to a multitude of films that were produced in the last century. Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, is one such film that saw the plot, themes and sexual innuendo explored once again in the 1981 film Body Heat. While both films demonstrate central themes associated with the mixed genre of noir, their similarities also introduce key differences that highlight the progression of cinematic acceptance. Double Indemnity proves that what was limited in the realm of contemporary Hollywood films has always been there, hidden in dialogue and shadows, and waiting for the liberation of permitted narrative. By comparison, Body Heat is the liberation that takes a seemingly carbon-copy femme fatale plot and rejuvenates its narrative in ways that symbolize the birth of a new era. Double Indemnity is the story of two lovers who are lost in a sea of ​​infidelity, murder and betrayal. In this film, a promiscuous married woman (Phyllis Dietrichson) meets an insurance salesman (Walter Neff) who has come to her house to discuss automobile insurance with her husband. After the first meeting, both subjects begin a downward spiral into a lustful pursuit of wealth and happiness. Dissatisfied with her cruel husband, Phyllis reaches out to her new lover and begs for a solution. Charmed by her good looks and charisma, Walter Neff agrees to help her. Although seemingly benign upon first meeting, the femme fatale of Phyllis' character emerges by identifying the way she desires liberation from her husband: murder. The plot to kill Phyllis' husband unfolds, and then follows the ultimate death of our femme fatale. Our two protagonists, Walter and Phyllis, create an elaborate plan for how, when and where they will get rid of her terrible spouse. However, as we understand that this is a film noir, it inevitably ends with the morals of both characters deteriorating, like many of the films made in this period, and chaos soon takes over the world they live in. One of the main themes explored, female sexuality, creates a profoundtension between the two deranged lovers. Phyllis desperately pleads with Walter that she needs him whenever they are not around, but he makes it clear that they must not be seen together to pull off a robbery of such unparalleled proportions. As viewers, we would expect this film to include sex and violence to advance the plot; However, because this film is bound by the limits of society's morals, the central themes of film noir and the femme fatale character were downplayed to become more politically acceptable. These underlying themes are again hinted at through the use of creative dialogue, female character attributes, and the constructive use of black and white film. It would seem that Phyllis accepts the role of men in her world as powerful people, but knows that they can be easily manipulated through carefully calculated sexual stimuli. This type of control she exerts over men is the exact archetype used to define many of the femme fatales seen in Hollywood's golden age films. However, Phyllis's sexual nature was only one of many ways in which filmmakers employed different perspectives of women in their films. German Expressionism is a term relating to the use of light and shadow as a means of conveying a character's deeper or ulterior psychological motivations, and this idea plays a key role in most film noir during the Golden Age. In Todd Erickson's text "Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre" he describes this style as "...deep focus photography, extreme camera angles, optical effects, flashbacks and voice-over narration... (these are ) cinematic components of the general film noir movement, a movement that darkened the atmosphere, or tone, in virtually all Hollywood film products of that era. Deep, harsh shadows and soft lighting are noir clichés that contributed to enhance the audience's understanding of the themes explored in each film. Neff has his first meeting with Phyllis, telling himself how: "I was thinking about that lady upstairs, and the way she looked at me, and he wanted to see her again, up close, without that stupid ladder between us." In that specific scene, we see Phyllis as a beauty spectacle, with her face illuminated by high-intensity lighting that allows the viewer to be drawn in, as the sirens of Greek mythology. Like any good enchantress, she weaves us along her web and as the story develops, her enlightenment becomes extremely low, perhaps this was used to express the true evil intentions that were behind Phyllis' character. Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 film Body Heat features an almost identical image. plot that reflects all the great themes, cinematography and dangerous female characteristics present in Double Indemnity but turns those ideas on their head. Body Heat tells the story of Ned Racine, an incompetent lawyer who finds himself trapped by the beautiful Matty Walker. In the first 30 minutes of the film, it's quite clear that Body Heat took great liberty in drawing the plot from Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. Featuring an equally shady vixen, sexual tension and a questionable plot to eliminate Matty's husband, the film would appear to be identical to its parent. While Double Indemnity may not stray into overtly sexually explicit territory, Body Heat leaves nothing to the audience's imagination. The aforementioned staircase scene in Double Indemnity, which served as a focal point to draw Walter Neff into Phyllis' web of sexual desire, also found its place in Body. Heat. Male protagonist Ned Racine throws a chair through the front door of Matty Walker's house after hershe asked him to leave, then the two have an explicit sex scene that takes place on her stairs. This scene, with its dramatic change in lighting, sweaty bodies and violent love, presents a kind of new age vision of what it means to be a woman with sexual desire. The sight of Phyllis Dietrichson wearing only a towel in Double Indemnity would have caused enough scandal upon its release. Body Heat takes this further. Nudity is a significant aspect of Body Heat and is used not only as a respective "kiss my ass" to the old Hollywood status quo, but is also used as a way to express the individuality and freedom that women experienced during the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre” by Todd Erickson explores the idea of ​​female liberation when he quotes Good Cleaning editor Alan Waxenberg, “…a cycle that began in the early 1950s with the baby boom created social pressure which forced women to be nothing more than housewives. “The 1960s and 1970s were years of experimentation, pushing women away from the home.” While not much changed in terms of dialogue between the years of creation of Double Indemnity and those of Body Heat, this fierce recognition of the female body was a critical theme explored by Lawrence Kasdan. Where the noir filmmakers of the Golden Years tiptoe around sexual activity, Body Heat embraces the limitless potential offered by the naked form. Body Heat is also set during a harrowing heat wave in Florida, which the film uses to promote sexual themes even further with the added emphasis on sweaty bodies. in popularity, and in doing so, also ended the “classic” noir narrative style found in films of the 1940s and 1950s and their use of black-and-white films (with the exception of a very select few films that experimented with color). Todd Erickson astutely noted this change in style when he wrote: “American filmmakers were unable and unwilling to spontaneously translate the cinematic vocabulary of film noir to the widescreen, color format that was becoming the norm in American cinema's competition with television for the spectator public. .“Television, with its demand for full lighting and close-ups, gradually undermined German influence,” Paul Schrader points out in 'Notes on Film Noir,' “and color cinematography was, of course, the final blow to ' noir'. Appearance." (p. 195) Incorporating the use of color film also meant that a director was giving the film more freedom of expression, and as a director it makes sense that the color palette chosen reflects the choices and lives of the characters inhabit his film.The overall color red always signifies the underlying themes of desire and lust prevalent in Body Heat.The color red is representative of love, strength and danger and complements the female protagonist in Body Heat perfectly. While audiences might see Matty Walker as a replacement for the old femme fatale archetype, what if he isn't? Although the term “noir” was coined by French critics of the mid-1950s, “neo-Noir” exists all over the world. within the noir universe itself but with an updated twist on the classic style seen in the 1940s and 1950s Matty Walker is one of these neo-noir dames who has also been updated and requires new terminology to define her. According to film critic James Lilek, femme fatales are “…the kind of women who can wear floor-length dresses and appear completely naked. Those with hair gathered on their heads like compliant snakes, or falling in smooth, shiny waves. Women with hard faces and mocking smiles and eyes that look at you.