American Cinema's episode Film Noir is a documentary in which film makers describe the genre and provide examples from various movies to support their opinions. Within the first ten minutes, actor John Lithgow described the film noir movies: "They were black and white, they were dark, and they were often raw. In this breed of film, the only law was rule of fate; the only order, a moral restitution where everybody dies at the end. But these films were always seductive." His description of Film Noir applies to the 1944 film Double Indemnity about an insurance representative who is seduced by a client's wife and eventually commits murder with her.
Also in the documentary, scholar Janey Place describes femme fatale's as "extremely driven, selfish, ambitious characters" which identifies Phyllis from Double Indemnity. Phyllis had already killed her husband's former wife just because she could, and in the movie she wants to kill her husband and does not stop until she gets what she wants. In this still she is even filmed from a low-angle shot to give the viewer a sense of her power.
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