Double Indemnity

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Double Indemnity, the Billy Wilder film that set the standard for film noir, even if Wilder had no idea what that term was at the time.

Based on a novel by James M. Cain, if it isn't the best noir film ever made, it is the most representative. It meets the following requirements: told in flashback, a scheme for money gone awry, the story told from the criminal's perspective, German expressionist photography, and most importantly, a femme fatale, one of the greatest, Barbara Stanwyck.

The film's narrator is Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Walter Neff. When we first see him he's wounded and confessing into a dictaphone (today it would be an email). It all started when he's over to a rich guy's house to get his signature on an auto renewal (policies are automatically renewed today, so no story). The husband isn't home, but his wife, Phyllis (Stanwyck) is. MacMurray flirts with her in some famous dialogue:

Phyllis: 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: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.

But Stanwyck will enlist him for murdering her husband (a basic noir plot, which Cain himself even used previously in The Postman Always Rings Twice). They will connive to sell the husband accident insurance with double indemnity, meaning it will pay off twice as high. But he has to die on a train.

MacMurray insists on doing everything "straight down the line," and his plan is a good one, but he has to get past a guy named Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a claims adjuster who can sniff out a phony claim--he has a "little man" inside him who tells him when something is phony. Initially he's fine with an accidental ruling, telling the CEO that a suicide is highly unlikely, with a memorable speech:

"Come now, you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by TYPES of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from STEAMBOATS. But, Mr. Norton: Of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No, no soap, Mr. Norton. We're sunk, and we'll have to pay through the nose, and you know it."

But Robinson does eventually get suspicious, and the plan unravels, especially when MacMurray finds out he's been had, and that he is one of the best examples of a film noir essential: the guy played as a sucker. Of course Stanwyck doesn't love him, she just needed him for the insurance information.

Double Indemnity was written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, who did not get along but who created a great script. It's full of great patter and moves along at q great pace. They had to deal with the Hays Office, which initially put studios off of buying Cain's book to begin with. The film was nominated for seven Oscars but won none, perhaps because the film was received well from an artistic standpoint but had noses turned up because of its unsavory characters. Going My Way, diametrically opposed to Double Indemnity, swept up the awards. When director Leo McCarey beat Wilder in that category, Wilder tripped him.

Double Indemnity has aged a lot better than Going My Way, and is usually called the best noir ever made, along with Out of the Past. Stanwyck, though wearing a ridiculous wig, gave a performance for the ages. MacMurray was known for light comedies, but this is his most famous film role (he would get back to kids fare with the Flubber roles and long-running TV sitcom, My Three Sons). Chandler was so put off by the experience he wrote a long screed against writing for Hollywood, although he would do it again, most notably for Alfred Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train.

"I did it for money, and a woman," MacMurray says, "and I didn't get the money, or the woman." That sentence sums up film noir more than any other. Greed and lust, two of the seven deadly sins and two of the most intense.