Double Indemnity (1944)
Directed by Billy Wilder

Film Review

Billy Wilder's first great film (his third directing job in Hollywood) was one of the earliest films to bring the aesthetics of film noir to the popular thriller genre movie.  Widely acknowledged as one of the best examples of film noir in American cinema, Double Indemnity ranks alongside Wilder's later works Sunset Boulevard (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) as an enduring all-time classic of Hollywood.  The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards - including Best Picture, Best Director (Wilder's first), Best Actress and Best Cinematography - although, incredibly, it won none.

Double Indemnity is a superlative adaptation of a classic novel by James M. Cain (the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice), which was inspired by a cause célèbre in 1927 (the Snyder-Gray murder case).  Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler, the eminent crime writer, best known as the creator of the detective Philip Marlowe.

The film combines hard-edged realism with an alluringly stylised design which subtly accentuates the story's central themes of manipulation, duplicity and suspicion.  Cinematographer John Seitz employs all the familiar film noir motifs -  particularly sharp camera angles and starkly expressionistic shadows - to create an atmosphere of lurking menace and slowly mounting paranoia, which is amplified by Miklos Rozsa's tension-building score.  Wilder's penchant for comedy occasionally surfaces in a few well-chosen moments where the tension is unexpectedly punctuated by a whiff of farce, something which adds to both the film's unsettling mood and its enjoyment value.

The main thrust of the film is Phyllis's cruel manipulation of Neff and how the latter reacts when he realises he has been duped.  What begins as a meticulously planned murder gradually degenerates into a disturbing game of cat and mouse between two deeply flawed individuals, with both parties growing increasingly suspicious of the other, and culminating in an explosive showdown.

As satisfying as the film is in its composition, design and cinematography, it is undeniably the performances from the trio of lead actors which makes this such a compelling work.   Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck have an on-screen chemistry that is charged with eroticism and emery, a smouldering rapport that threatens to flare up at any moment. Stanwyck brings to her portrayal of the femme fatale both an irresistibly seductive charm and a sense of pure, undiluted evil.  MacMurray has the more complex character.  Neff shares some of the self-interested venality of his partner, but with a greater moral awareness - his smattering of conscience is what brings about the conflict and mounting tension as the narrative progresses. 

With such morally dubious characters in the foreground of the drama, it is left to the overly conscientious insurance assessor Barton Keyes - played wonderfully by Edward G. Robinson (an actor who found fame in gangster films in the 1930s) - to provide the moral yardstick against which the two main characters are to be measured.  It is partly down to Keyes's influence that Neff partially redeems himself at the conclusion of the film, where he acts to stop the conflagration he has started from devouring any more victims.  In the first draft of the screenplay, Neff was to have been executed at the end of the film.  Wilder felt this ending was far too gloomy and so elected for a gentler denouement which is just as fitting.

Fred MacMurray was initially very reluctant to play the part of Neff.  He had previously established a name for himself in a series of lightweight romantic comedies and was reluctant to give up his nice guy image to play the part of a murderer.  It was only through Wilder's insistence (and desperation - the director had also offered the part to Alan Ladd and George Raft, without success) that he ended up accepting the part, although he later admitted that it was the best role of his career.  MacMurray would later play another "bad guy" in Wilder's The Apartment (1960).

Double Indemnity represents the best that Hollywood could offer in the 1940s - a film with great production values, a taut, well-structured narrative and spellbinding performances.  It's a slick, entertaining production that deserves its classic status and reputation as one of Billy Wilder's best films.

Film Synopsis

Insurance salesman Walter Neff staggers into his Los Angeles office and, speaking into a Dictaphone, he begins to make a terrible confession.  Some months ago, he met and fell in love with Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of one of his clients.  Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she coerced him into murdering her husband, after he had helped her to take out a life insurance policy.  By arranging the murder to look like an accident, Neff ensures that Phyllis can make a double indemnity claim.  Assessor Barton Keyes is ready to pay out when he suddenly senses that something is wrong.  As the carefully laid scheme begins to unravel, Neff makes some shocking discoveries about Phyllis...