Jaime núñez precioso

Bloque IV. Unidad didáctica sobre
televisión.
El cine en la televisión y los valores
éticos.

Autor: Jaime Núñez Precioso

Curso de Medios de Comunicación como recurso didáctico, Enero-Marzo 2009

Destinatarios

• Alumnado de 2º Bachillerato. Inglés.


Objetivos
• Utilizar la lengua objeto de aprendizaje, (inglés) para
debatir y realizar un pequeño ensayo sobre el tema.
• Ampliar el vocabulario en lengua inglesa incluyendo
terminología relacionada con el “film noir” americano.
• Debatir sobre los valores éticos y su posible cambio a
través del tiempo.
• Aprender terminología audio-visual, aplicable al cine y
a la televisión: Plano general, plano americano, primer
plano, fundido en negro, fundido encadenado, plano
picado, plano contrapicado, plano cenital, voz en off,
flashback, flash-forward, etc.


Contenidos
• Utilizar tiempos verbales para expresar el pasado en
inglés: Past Simple, Past Continuous, Present Perfect
Simple, etc.
• Desarrollar un vocabulario en inglés que permita a los
alumnos hablar y debatir sobre el “film noir” y su
código ético.
• Analizar la imagen desde el punto de vista de los
planos y los ángulos de la cámara.
• El código Hays, también conocido como “The Motion
Picture Production Code”. ¿Qué era? ¿Por qué se creó?
¿Es la autocensura necesaria en el mundo audio-visual
y en el entretenimiento de masas?


Recursos
• Sinopsis en inglés de la película de Billy Wilder:
“Double Indemnity” 1944, (en castellano “Perdición”).
• Proyector para visionar con las alumnas y los alumnos
algunas secuencias relevantes de la cinta.
• Programa de RTVE “¡Qué grande es el cine!”, donde el
director José Luis Garci, Eduardo Torres-Dulce y otros
críticos analizan “Double Indemnity” desde el punto de
vista del cine negro americano de los años 40, los
aspectos técnicos de la cinta y su relación con el
Código Hays.


Actividades (60 minutos)
• The students will begin by reading the plot of this wonderful example of American film noir
classic, “Double Indemnity”, directed by Billy Wilder in 1944, and co-written by him and the
great American author Raymond Chandler, (10 minutes).

• PLOT: “Walter Neff (Fred Mac Murray), a successful insurance salesman for Pacific All Risk,
returns to his office building in downtown Los Angeles late one night. He is clearly in pain as he
sits down at his desk and begins dictating a memo into a Dictaphone machine for colleague
Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a claims adjuster. The dictation becomes the story of the
film, which is told in flashback.

Neff first meets “femme fatale” Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) during a routine house
call to renew an automobile insurance policy for her husband. A flirtation develops, at least until
Phyllis asks how she could take a policy on his husband’s life without his knowing it. Neff realizes
she is contemplating murder, and wants no part of it.

Phyllis pursues Neff to his own home though, and ups the voltage of her flirtation. Neff’s gullibility
and libido quickly overcome his caution, and he agrees that the two of them, together, will kill her
husband. Neff knows all the tricks of the trade, of course, and comes up with plan in which
Phyllis’s husband will die an unlikely death, in this case falling from a moving train. The
“accidental” nature of his demise will trigger the “double indemnity” clause of the policy, forcing
Pacific All Risk to pay the widow twice the normal amount.


The couple carries out their plan. Neff hides in the back seat of the car that Phyllis is driving, and
kills Mr. Dietrichson. Neff escorted by Phyllis, then boards the train, pretending to be her husband
on a trip to Palo Alto for a college reunion. He uses a pair of crutches because Mr. Dietrichson
has recently broken a leg. He also identifies himself as Dietrichson to a passenger from Oregon
he encounters after the train pulls out of the station. Neff jumps off, safely, and he and Phyllis
place Dietrichson’s body on the tracks. Phyllis drives Neff home.

Mr. Norton, All Pacific Risk Insurance Company's chief, believes the death was suicide and is
prepared to settle with Phyllis; but Investigator Keyes dissuades him by quoting statistics
indicating the improbability of suicide, to Neff's initial delight.

Keyes does not suspect foul play at first, but the "little man" in his chest keeps nagging that all is
not right with this case. He eventually concludes that the Dietrichson woman and some unknown
accomplice must be behind the husband's death. He has no reason to be suspicious of Neff, a
colleague he has worked with for quite some time and actually views with considerable paternal
affection.

Keyes, however, is not Neff's only worry. The victim's daughter, Lola, (Jean Heather), comes to
him, convinced that stepmother Phyllis is behind her father's death. It seems Lola's mother also
died under suspicious circumstances, while Phyllis was her nurse. Neff's concern goes beyond
his fear that Lola might blow the whistle on the murder; he is not such a jerk that he doesn't begin
to care about what might happen to the girl, whose parents have both been murdered.


Keyes, now suspecting Dietrichson was murdered, is prepared to reject the claim and force Mrs.
Dietrichson to sue in order to expose her. Neff warns Phyllis not to sue and admits he has been
talking to Lola about her past.
Then he learns Phyllis is seeing Lola's boyfriend Nino Zachetti, behind her, and his own, back.
Phyllis's unfaithfulness helps wake Neff from his romantic haze and he wants to save himself
from his dire involvement with her and with murder. He reasons that the only way out is to make
the police think Phyllis and Nino did the murder, which is what the tenacious Keyes now believes
anyway.
Neff and Phyllis meet at her house and she tells him she has been seeing Nino only to provoke
him into killing the suspicious Lola in a jealous rage. Neff is now wholly disgusted and is about to
kill Phyllis when she shoots him first. Badly wounded but still standing, he advances on her,
taunting her to shoot again. She does not shoot and he takes the gun from her. She says she
never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot." Neff coldly says he
does not believe her; she tries hugging him tightly but then pulls away and looks pleadingly at
him when she feels the gun pressed against her side. Neff says "Goodbye, baby," then shoots
twice and kills her.
Outside, Neff hides in the bushes and intercepts Nino as he approaches, ostensibly to visit his
lover, Phyllis. Neff advises him to not enter the house, but to leave and contact "the woman who
truly loves you" — Lola. Nino agrees and heads out, avoiding what would have been damning
evidence against him if he'd entered the murder house.

Neff, gravely injured, drives to his office, seats himself at the Dictaphone, and starts explaining.
Keyes arrives in mid-confession and hears enough to understand everything. Neff tells Keyes he
is going to Mexico rather than face a death sentence, but drops to the floor before he can reach
the elevator. With Keyes looking down at him, Neff says the reason Keyes couldn't solve the
case was because Neff was "too close" as a fellow employee. Keyes tells Neff he was "much
closer than that." Neff responds, "I love you too," and puts a cigarette in his mouth. Neff is unable
to light the match with his thumb, as he has done throughout the film, so Keyes lights it with his.
THE END.”


• Secondly: Students will debate as a class, among them and with their teacher, technical and
moral aspects of the movie, (35 minutes).
Technical aspects of the movie: The different types of shot: Long shot, (plano general), medium
shot (plano medio o plano americano), close-up shot, (primer plano).
Also a high angle shot (plano picado) positions the camera above eye-level, looking down on the
subject, who consequently appears insignificant, weak, helpless or small according to how
extreme the angle is. We also have the eye-level shot (plano a nivel de los ojos), giving a neutral
impression. Finally, we have the low angle shot, (plano contrapicado), with the camera looking up
at the subject, who appears important, powerful or domineering, again depending on how
exaggerated the angle is.
Also we have to remember, from the technical point of view, the elegance of black and white
cinematography; also that the screen the movies are shown at in 1944 is square. That the
composition for this square screen is different from what is going to be later on for the stretched
Cinemascope widescreen. “The Robe”, in 1953, being the first movie ever released in this new
format.

Hays Code and Moral Values in “Double Indemnity”:

In 1922, after some risqué movies and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars,
the studios enlisted Presbyterian, Will H. Hays, to rehabilitate Hollywood’s image. Hollywood in
the 1920’s was expected to be somewhat corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always
been morally questionable. Political pressure was building up, with legislators in 37 states
introducing almost 100 movie censorship bills in 1921. Hays was then paid the then lavish sum
$100,000 a year. Hays, Postmaster General under President of the USA Warren G. Harding and
former head of the Republican National Committee, served for 25 years as President of the
“Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America” (MPPDA).


The Hays Code imposed a serious censorship in American movies until the late 1950s. The Hays Code
denied the right to appear in movies to the following things: “Profanity, licentious or suggestive nudity,
illegal traffic in drugs, sex perversion, white slavery, sex relations between the white and black races,
scenes of actual childbirth (in fact or in silhouette), ridicule of the clergy, willful offense of any nation, race
or creed, etc…).
The Hays Code also said that special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are
treated, and that good taste be emphasized: “The use of the flag, the use of firearms, theft, robbery, safe-
cracking, dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, (having in mind the effect that a too-detailed description
of these might have upon simple people), techniques of committing murder by whatever method, actual
hanging or electrocution as legal punishment for crime, sympathy for criminals, apparent cruelty to
children or animals, the sale of women or of a woman selling “her virtue”, man and woman in bed
together, the institution of marriage, excessive or lustful kissing, etc…”

In what ways do we think the Hays Code was excessive? Do we need such a code in nowadays
television? Do the students think television in Spain has already a Hays Code of sorts?

We mustn’t forget what problems “Double Indemnity” must have faced with the Hays Code upon
release. “Double Indemnity” portraits adultery of Phyllis with Walter Neff; murder of a husband by
his wife and her lover; murder of the husband’s first wife by his second wife, Phyllis. And also not
to forget the attempt of getting $100,000 by a false “double indemnity” claim from Pacific All Risk
Insurance Company.

Also does “Double Indemnity” reflect the “low moral guidelines” of a nation, the USA in 1944, which just
came out of a long period of economic recession that started with the Stock Exchange Crack of 1929? A
nation that had also entered World War II on December 7th 1941 and that by 1944 had been more than 3
years in that bloody conflict? Do the students think that today’s recession also “lowers” our moral
standards and makes our television programs worse?
Students will debate during 35 minutes all these moral aspects, drawing parallels between the Hays
Code, Double Indemnity and today’s television programs and the presence or absence of ethic and moral
guidelines.

Thirdly, and finally, the students will summarize their ideas about today’s debate in a short essay
that they will begin writing in the last 15 minutes of class. They will finish as homework and will
hand it in to their teacher the following day.


Evaluación
• The teacher will evaluate the students’ capabilities to
take part in the classroom debate, as well as their
capacity to express their opinion and to back it up with
solid arguments.

• The teacher will also evaluate their capacity to put
their ideas in writing, by reading their short essays, (it
shouldn’t be more than one side of a page typed out).
There, the students will show their mastery of English
grammar and vocabulary, as well as the depth and
understanding of their ideas of today’s debate.


Jaime núñez precioso

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