Double Indemnity (1944)

 DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)

By Ralph Santini - ****

An extraordinary and incomparable piece of cinema, Double Indemnity is a prime candidate to be one the finest films of all time. With superb direction by the one and only Billy Wilder, the great Film Noir tells a grim story of an insurance salesman who gets suckered into murdering a desperate woman’s husband in order to get a better life. The smart salesman, Walter Neff, is portrayed by Fred MacMurray against type and the woman, the scheming and devious Femme Fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson is a terrific characterization by the not too pretty but still incomparable talent Barbara Stanwyck.

The story takes place in Los Angeles, California in the summer of 1938 where Walter Neff is a successful but bored salesman, who’s been employed by an important insurance firm known as Pacific All Risk Insurance Co. for 11 years. In the beginning of the film, however, Walter is in visible pain and visits his office one more time recording a Dictaphone as a message for his old boss and friend, Barton Keyes (a riveting Edward G. Robinson) who is the claims manager for the insurance company. He recalls what has been happening to him all the time explaining his own visible scars. He explains that he met Phyllis in her old California Spanish house where she, her husband and his daughter lived.

 Their first meeting is a routine check up on some auto renewals for Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers) only to find out he isn’t home but Walter and Phyllis have a friendly chit chat during this event. This affair, however doesn’t go right when Phyllis asks Walter to if she could take out an accident policy on her husband's life without bothering him, in other words not letting her husband know it. Walter then concludes that what Phyllis wants is Mr. Dietrichson dead, which means murder and he wants absolutely no part of it. However Phyllis decides to seduce Walter into killing her husband by visiting his own apartment and explains that she hates her husband with a passion. Later Walter and Phyllis find the perfect idea for a perfect murder and that would making Mr. Dietrichson’s death look like a train accident with a double indemnity clause.

This clause is about certain life insurance policies that payout twice just in case the death is caused by a good number of strong accidents. The plan would succeed later in the film but there is one problem. After its revealed Mr. Dietrichson died, the Pacific All Risk company is not at all satisfied with what happened to the deceased leading into a number of dubious suspicions that might put both, Walter and Phyllis in to serious situations. None of this however affects Phyllis and she would later distrust Walter more, much to his fear on the bind he is in. All of this will be leading into a series of great twists which I can’t give away for this entire Noir gem.

The film was based on a novel by James M. Cain, which had a rather controversial story at the time the Hays Production Code that ruled all kinds of film content. That’s why it took only eight years to begin filming the book but the script was not written by Cain himself, but the film’s director Billy Wilder himself and a to a bigger extent, a fellow hardboiled fiction writer better known for the Phillip Marlowe novels, Raymond Chandler; all of these historical details regarding Cain’s lack of involvement the script are left with unexplained reasons. Nevertheless the results were altogether terrific.

In 1945, the film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including best picture. None of them were able to win any of those awards and that’s really a shame, because this film happens to be to best of the year of its own, or any other. Double Indemnity happens to be great in many positive levels. It’s not only the finest film noir ever but it’s also one the great motion pictures in cinema history. Stanwyck did a magnificent job in playing a vicious Femme Fatale who does everything to stand nothing but ruin the lives of any kind of innocent people, including Walter Neff. Also John F. Seitz’s cinematography is compelling and hardboiled because it holds you extremely captive in on the most exciting stories ever told in Hollywood filmmaking and no other film noir gets any better than that. Same thing will have to go for the exiting music by the one and only Mikloz Rosza.

The results for Double Indemnity are all filled with brilliance and dignity. It is definitely one of the all-time greats with immortal perfection, flawless writing and wonderful performances. That’s why it should be defined as the finest, most influential Film Noir of all time.