Film Noir: "Black Film"

In Double Indemnity, there are a multitude of elements that seem dark or depressing. The first, and most obvious, would be the setting. The setting is typical of film noir. The visual conventions include dark interiors, heavy shadow, high contrast, and bars or slashes of light. I noticed that many of the bars or slashes of light are created by slatted blinds.
 
 
Along with the aforementioned details, I picked up on the fact that the setting was often very foggy or dusty, which made the setting not only more dark and depressing, but it made the setting seemed cramped and uncomfortable.
 
Overall, the use of dark and depressing conventions in the setting portrays the environment that the characters live in as dangerous and full of corruption, mystery, and violence, inhabited by people with dubious motives and poor morals.

Many dark and depressing themes exist in the storyline as well. At the very beginning of the film, Walter Neff is giving a confession in which he states "I killed him for money - and a woman - and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman. Pretty, isn't it?" This brief summary of his motives sets the tone as depressing from the start. The entire plot following this is dark and depressing as well. It begins with a wounded (depressing) insurance salesman walking up to his partners office. He makes his confession in which he is seduced by a beautiful girl into cheating his insurance company (dark) in order to get a double indemnity for her husbands death (dark). If that is not dark then I don't know what is. To add icing on the cake, their love soon turns into hatred for each other (dark AND depressing). Nothing turns out how the characters wanted, the lady's husband is killed, and Neff goes crazy, cheats his company, loses his woman, and confesses it all at the end. This film has dark and depressing written all over it in dark black paint (see what I did there?).