The "Keyes" to Film Noir

During our watching of Double Indemnity, I decided that I may have a skewed view of what coolness is. Although the target of coolness of the film was Walter Neff, I did not think he was cool in any way. In fact, I believed him to be very uncool. The first inkling of uncoolness that I found in him was the way he instantly fell into a shallow relationship with the obviously bad Phyllis. Additionally, Neff was willing to be an adulterer without having any true romantic love towards Phyllis. This adds to the uncoolness of Neff because he was willing to desecrate the solemnity of marriage without anything except sex and the want to exploit the insurance system. As for Neff's want to beat the insurance system, I found his actions to be incredibly unnecessary. If Neff had accepted the desk job that Keyes had offered him, he could have satiated his intellectual appetite by handling insurance claims, but because Neff did not think this through very much, he chose the much more immoral and uncool path of actually killing a man in an attempt to break the system. Another factor of uncoolness that plagues Neff is his inability to control the greed of Phyllis. For example, when Phyllis was offered the settlement, if Neff had simply convinced her to take it then both of them would have been able to get away with the entire scheme.

Personally, I found Keyes to be the only oasis of coolness in the entirety of Double Indemnity. Throughout the entire film, he retains his morality and genuinely acts to bring justice to those who attempt to thwart the insurance company's policies. In addition, he uses the powers of deduction and math to sniff out the smallest flaws in the carefully constructed lies of fraudulent customers. The combination of intellect and doing the right thing is what generates Keyes' coolness. Also, despite his initial appearance as a cold "detective", his final actions prove him to be a caring person. When Neff is vainly trying to get away from his fate, Keyes both calls the police to take him in and the ambulance to save his life. The true moment of compassion comes when Neff lacks the strength to even strike a match and Keyes lends a hand to light Neff's final cigarette. Ultimately, coolness can only exist when the person in question is truly kind at heart.