Furnishing the living room in film noir: disillusion and the armchair

This chapter explores the mise-en-scene of the noir living room, with particular reference to the seemingly innocuous armchair in two archetypal examples of the tough noir thriller, Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep. In early manifestations, the living room consensus was presented in relation to a hopeful post-war return, as an embodiment of familial identity and in order to stress livability: the ability to dwell comfortably in the home again following a period of social upheaval. By the mid-1940s, Hollywood film noir had begun to highlight a society which in reality was much more unstable, having failed to live up to the promises of wartime advertising. Like the advertised cigarette or the meat grid, the image of the armchair in later films noirs reinforces an illusion of the pre-war home and domestic security, only to unravel these notions using scenes of disillusion, neglect, and corruption.