 Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson, Tom PowersDirector: Billy Wilder Year Of Release: 1944 Plot: Insurance salesman Walter Neff makes a house-call on Phyllis Dietrichson, which develops into a flirtation, however he realises something fishy is going on when she tries to find out how she could take out a life insurance policy on her husband without him knowing. Phyllis pursues Neff and persuades him that together they can kill her husband and if they do it right, the double indemnity clause of the insurance policy will kick in, paying out double. |
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Double Indemnity is one of those films which Im constantly telling people they must watch, but I rarely seem to make much headway. I think the problem, in the UK at least, is that for over 20 years, the 1944 film noir pretty much disappeared from view. Ive been trying to discover whether there were specific issues with the rights (which is, for example, why Hitchcocks Vertigo was rarely seen from the late 70s to the early 90s), or whether Universal simply didnt think anyone in the UK cared, but it was rarely seen on TV and never made it onto VHS. With numerous other old movies languishing in the Universal vaults, particularly those, like Double Indemnity, which were part of the pre-1948 Paramount library that Universal owns, I suspect it was more to do with them not bothering to release it rather than not being able to.
It didnt reach the home entertainment arena in the UK until 2005, when Universal brought it out on DVD. However by that point it had been out of the public consciousness for so long that nowadays when you talk to anyone but a real film fan about it, theyll look at you blankly and assume its just some obscure movie thats only of interest to cineastes. But its not, its fantastic and deserves to be held in as high esteem as any of the true Golden Age classics, such as Casablanca and Sunset Boulevard. More than that, it is perhaps the ultimate film noir.
It may not feature a private eye, but it has the greatest femme fatale of all in Barbara Stanwycks Phyllis Dietrichson, a woman who is part housewife, part sex bomb and part psychotic spider-woman. It also has a wonderful way of subverting morality, as well as an unreliable narrator, fantastic chiaroscuro lighting (it was Double Indemnity that first made harshly contrasting pools of light and dark a real feature of film noir) and a fabulous plot. (Incidentally if you’re interested in finding out more about exactly what film noir is, head over to the Movie-A-Day article on The Big Heat)
However its not just in the UK that its not as well known as it should be, as while its at number 57 on IMDBs Top 250 list, it has the smallest number of votes in the top 60, suggesting that worldwide not as many people are watching it as they should be even if those who have seen it think its stunning. There are other films from the 1940s above it in the IMBD list, but Casablanca has over 160,000 votes, Its A Wonderful Life has 98,000, Citizen Kane has 134,000, while Double Indemnity has to get by with only 35,000.
Basically all the above is to say not enough people have seen this film, which Id easily place in my list of the 10 best movies ever made. So go out, get yourself a copy and watch it now, because if you havent seen it, youre missing a treat.
For a start it has some glorious dialogue, of the sort film noir is famous for, where on the surface the actual content of what theyre saying is almost irrelevant, but underneath its loaded with sex and tension. Take this famous exchange for example:
Phyllis Dietrichson: Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty. He’ll be in then.
Walter Neff: Who?
Phyllis Dietrichson: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis Dietrichson: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis Dietrichson: I’d say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis Dietrichson: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take.
Phyllis Dietrichson: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis Dietrichson: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.
All theyre actually doing is talking in Phyllis’ house, and the words themselves dont really have anything directly to do with whats going on, but on-screen its a wonderfully sexy exchange, with the steamy air coming both from the suggestiveness of what theyre saying and also the fact its a mix between an intellectual battle for mental dominance and a seduction.
Double Indemnity is also gripping drama, and told in a way thats brilliantly conceived, with a wounded Neff recounting the events that led to him getting shot. Thats not to mention the incredible creative team behind it, which pretty much ensured it would be something special. While Fred MacMurray later became known for comedies like The Shaggy Dog and The Absentminded Professor (aka Flubber), in the 40s he was a top dramatic actor and is brilliant in Double Indemnity.
Barbara Stanwyck is also wonderful, underlining why she is films ultimate example of the male fantasy of a woman who looks like shed be both the perfect wife and also an absolute dynamo in bed (although admittedly she is a bit of a homicidal maniac in Double Indemnity, but I suppose you cant have it all). Theres also Edward G. Robinson, perhaps Hollywoods greatest ever character actor, who was never less than watchable in anything he appeared in.
Thats not to mention those behind the camera. The film is based on a novel by Hard-Boiled writer James M. Cain, who also created the likes of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce. The screenplay was co-written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. While Chandler is primarily known as a novelist and the creator of quintessential private eye Phillip Marlowe, as well as the writer of The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell My Lovely, he was also a Hollywood screenwriter. That said, Wilder and Chandler apparently detested one another and at one point the relationship between the two became so fraught that Chandler quit Double Indemnity and had to be convinced by the studio to return.
Of course Wilder also directed. It was one of his first films after moving from writing to directing, and it was his first big success. It scored him his first Best Director Oscar nomination (although he already had three writing nominations under his belt, and scored a fourth for Double Indemnity). The following year he won both Best Director and Best Screenplay for The Lost Weekend, a movie which also scored Best Picture. He went on to make such classics as Sunset Blvd., Stalag 17, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment and Irma La Douce. Wilder is undoubtedly one of the greatest directors of all time.
Interestingly, Double Indemnity is also partially based on a true story, rather in the same way as Psycho is based on serial murderer Ed Gein. James M. Cain was fascinated by Ruth Snyder, the first woman ever to be executed in the electric chair. Her story informed both Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Its easy to see why Cain was interested, even if her actual crime was rather inept. As a 30-year-old housewife in New York in the mid-1920s, Snyder began an affair with a corset salesman called Henry Judd Gray, and then enlisted the rather weak-willed Judd to help her kill her husband, Albert. However she didnt just want Albert dead, she also wanted to profit from it, so she got a shady insurance salesman to illegally set up a life insurance policy in Alberts name, which he knew nothing about and it did indeed have a double indemnity clause, paying out double if he met a violent end.
Ruth and Judd then set about killing her hubby, failing several times before garrotting him and then staging a fake burglary, with Ruth telling the police he was killed by the robbers and that she’d witnessed it. However things quickly began to unravel as while Judd and Ruth thought theyd been incredibly clever, the police were immediately suspicious, noting that there was little evidence of a break-in and that Ruths behaviour didnt match what she was saying about witnessing a terrifying crime.
They soon found plenty of other evidence, not least that it was discovered that things that were supposedly stolen were still actually in Ruths possession. She was also the agent of her own downfall, as the police probably wouldnt have had enough evidence to convict her, except that when the cops found a note with the initials J.G. on it, she asked what Judd Gray had to do with anything. Before that, the police knew nothing of her lover, and from there it was only a few steps to finding him, destroying his alibi and getting the duo to turn on one another, each saying the other committed the actual murder. They were eventually both found guilty and executed, one after another, in the electric chair.
The case gripped the nation, and while most of the journalists covering it realised that it was actually a badly planned and executed crime, the idea of an attractive housewife turned spider-woman and her spineless lover concocting a way to kill her husband and get rich off it had enough hooks to ensure saturation coverage. It was undoubtedly one of the biggest cases of the 1920s.
For Double Indemnity, Cain took many of the basic elements, but merged the lover and the insurance agent into a single character, and also assumed they werent as dumb as a box of rocks (which Snyder and Gray do appear to have been, at least when it came to murder and trying to get away with it). He also added in a few other elements to create one of the best crime stories around a tale of conflicted emotions and ethics, where the good guy is also the bad guy and sex beats intellect nearly every time.
Billy Wilder kept all that for the film, and with the help of some truly top talent created one of the best movies ever made. It is brilliant, so if youve never seen it, go watch it now, and if you have, watch it again, as its one movie that never gets old.
TIM ISAAC
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