Visiting Film Noir: Double Indemnity

1944 Film Noir

From Paramount Pictures

Directed by Billy Wilder

Starring 

Fred MacMurray

Barbara Stanwyck

Edward G. Robinson 

Porter Hall

Jean Heather

Tom Powers

Byron Barr

Richard Gaines

A month or so ago a friend asked me why I liked film noir so much and if I agreed with most scholars in the field that Double Indemnity is the best of them all.  After I waxed rhapsodic about my favorite genre I told him that for years I didn't think all that much of this movie although I recognize its lofty position in the annals of film noir.  And how odd that I felt as I did considering it stars one of my favorite actresses of all time in the most famous role she ever had.  He was dumbstruck when I said I've never reviewed it in the nearly 10 years of writing this blog.

I guess I just never felt good about the world after seeing it... its nastiness wore me out.  I had been aware there were some problems bringing it to the screen.  Those watchdogs of the country's morals in 1944 were known as the Hays Office and they dashed others' hopes about producing it because it hardened audience attitudes toward crime.  George Raft and Alan Ladd, both noir leading men, turned it down because they thought the story too ugly for their tastes.

For some time that's how I felt as well.  Nonetheless I had fallen in love with noir thanks to such films as The Big Sleep, Gilda, Crossfire, Out of the Past, and The Big Heat.  But one day-- I think in the 80s-- I gave Double Indemnity another shot and came to find it an exquisite rendering of a film noir.  Why it's taken me so long to write about it here I just can't say. 

The story opens late at night in 1938 Los Angeles with a wounded MacMurray entering the insurance building where he works.  He sits in his boss's chair and speaks into a dictaphone.  Told in flashback, MacMurray's Walter Neff (that's two f's as in Philadelphia) goes to a home in the Los Feliz area to renew an auto policy.  After a maid opens the door, he spots a seductive blonde at the top of a staircase with a towel wrapped around her.  To say that he was immediately taken with her is an understatement.

She is the seductive Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck).  After she dresses she asks him if it's possible to have an accident policy on her husband without him knowing about it.  Neff's red flags go up but he continues to listen.  Noir has always had saucy dialogue, which I absolutely eat up, and here's an example:

PD:  You wanted to talk to my husband, didn't you?

WN:  Yeah I did but I'm sort of getting over the idea.  (She catches him looking her over.)

PD:  There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff, 45 mph.

WN:  How fast was I going, Officer?

PD:  I'd say around 90.

WN:  Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket?

PD:  Suppose I let you off with a warning this time?

WN:  Suppose it doesn't take?

PD:  Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles?

WN: What if I start crying and put my head on your shoulder?

PD:  Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder?

WN:  That tears it.

Sensing her treacherousness, he gets annoyed and leaves but the next day he's back.  He confirms that she wants him dead and he not only volunteers to handle it but insists upon it, claiming with his insurance background he can pull it off. 

Neff advises Phyllis that killing the husband and making it look like an accident will result in the policy paying double, hence the film's title. 

In an elaborate scheme, Neff kills the husband (Powers), with Phyllis' assistance and then Neff takes the husband's place on a train trip the husband had arranged.  He quietly jumps off the train and then he and Phyllis dump the body on the tracks, assuming that it will look like an accident.

But things start to go wrong when Stanwyck's stepdaughter (Heather) tells Neff that she suspects Phyllis is behind the death and that it's murder and not an accident.  She vows to make trouble.  Then the daughter's easily-irritated boyfriend looks to be mysteriously involved somehow.  Neff stars to get nervous.

But then real fun comes when Neff's boss, Barton Keyes (Robinson), a naturally suspicious claims man, gets involved.  At first Keyes thinks everything is on the up and up but soon he smells a rat.  We watch as he begins putting things together.   He doesn't suspect Neff-- and in fact includes him in what he's thinking-- but he does think Phyllis is behind the murder with the help of a man.  Watching it unfold is really quite exciting.  How could I have missed this early on?

I loved the confrontation between Neff and Phyllis near the end and then the meeting of Neff and Keyes as the latter enters his own office, admitting to Neff that he'd been listening to what he had been dictating.

The writing is what puts this film on the top of the heap.  Of course it features the cynical, sinister, tense and provocative language of noir but it has something that every great movie should have.  Each scene feels like a story in and of itself with a beginning, middle and end.  And the result is audacious and exciting but perhaps not quite as exciting as the behind-the-scenes drama in Paramount's writers' quarters.  

Double Indemnity was originally a crime novel written by James M. Cain.  He had earlier written The Postman Always Rings Twice and would later write Mildred Pierce, both of which were turned into highly-lauded films with their noir sensibilities and female protagonists.  By the way, Cain wrote more than a few novels but none stood up to these three.

I don't recall why Cain wasn't offered at shot at adapting his own work although I do know he was working on another screenplay and perhaps he was not offered the chance when Billy Wilder got involved.  Wilder would both direct the film, his first thriller, and cowrite, he hoped, with his usual partner, Charles Brackett, but Brackett found the story unappealing.  Wilder, who liked writing with a partner, despite, I guess, the horrific arguments that came as a result, hired one.  He was none other than mystery writer Raymond Chandler, famous for giving birth to detective Philip Marlowe.  It would be his first screenplay. 

Wilder and Chandler would detest one another practically from first sighting.  They had a terrific row when Wilder realized Chandler had changed much of Cain's original dialogue.  But he came to feel that Chandler knew a thing or two about hard-boiled characters and how they spoke.  

For his part, Cain was highly enthused over what Chandler wrote and forever praised him.  Chandler also said he saw the movie countless times.

It's a bit unusual that all three stars were reluctant to sign on but it is  Wilder with his mysterious powers that got them to change their minds.  What a dream they all are.

When I have mentioned before that I am not a MacMurray fan, I've always added that Double Indemnity is the best thing he's ever done.  He is, in fact, terrific.  He was cast against type... the type being the perennial nice guy in countless lightweight fare... and when that happened, as it later did in The Caine Mutiny, Pushover and The Apartment... one sat up and took notice.  His acting is all on his face and his best characters were ones where a basic good guy sort of stumbles into a dark arena he's wholly unprepared for.

Usually, there's a dame.  He only calls Phyllis Baby.  He never fully understands her, never quite sure of the game they're playing.  He usually played befuddled to some degree in his comedies.  Here he has to deal with it in life and death drama and he resonates a truth that is nothing short of brilliant.  

MacMurray was far from the first choice to play Walter Neff but when approached by Wilder, he said he didn't think he was right for the part.  But Wilder wore him down, something the cocky little German was good at, and their relationship was so good that 16 years later Wilder cast MacMurray in The Apartment, again to great acclaim.

Stanwyck, on the other hand, was the only choice, to play the wicked Phyllis.  Wilder had never directed her before (or since) but he did write some pretty funny lines for her to say in Ball of Fire three years earlier.  Wilder said he knew two things from the outset... how he would tell the story and getting Stanwyck.  

She thought it was the best script she'd ever read and was dying to work with Wilder as a director.  She also thought it would be great to work with MacMurray again, a friend since they'd made Remember the Night four years earlier (and would go on to make The Moonlighter in 1953 and There's Always Tomorrow in 1955).

On the other hand, she thought it could be career suicide.  She never played such an outright villainous person and rightfully questioned how her fans would accept her here.  My God, she's a bitch, the actress said.  Does she have any redeeming qualities?  She expressed her concerns to Wilder who said what are you, a mouse or an actress?

Seeing her coming down those stairs in that blonde wig, quarterback shoulders, torpedo-tight sweater, cfm pumps and an anklet is, well, unforgettable.  It's equally memorable when at the end she tells MacMurray that she's rotten, that she's never loved him or anyone else and that she used him is chilling... said only as Stanwyck could.  She needn't have worried about her career... this film opened up a brand new one for her.

Robinson's reservations were not directed at the sordidness of the story but a frequent Hollywood conundrum... billing.  He didn't think he should be third.  Apparently ol' Uncle Billy had a friendly chat with him as well, reminding him that he was in a transitional phase of his career... from leading man to costar.  He sweetened the pot by reminding him he was making as much dough as Stanwyck and MacMurray and to point out the excitement that his character creates... which it certainly does.  

It is a wonderful role for Robinson and he gives it all the spit and polish that he has in his arsenal.  He and Stanwyck have only a couple of scenes together but they are memorable, particularly one where's she's hiding behind a door.  They would work together 10 years later as husband and wife in the western The Violent Men.  Her character's name should have been Phyllis Jr.

And boy there is that noir atmosphere oozing from the pores of this crime drama... the dark shadows, the slices of various lighting schemes, the ever-present blinds, the dark streets, the cold house, the bad woman, the straight-up cop (or in this case insurance claims man).  It's all here to help turn a wonderfully written story into a visual masterpiece.

Finally, the exterior of the Dietrichson home is in one of my favorite L.A. areas, Los Feliz, home of Griffith Park, and so old Hollywood.  That home is still standing.  I used to take my visiting friends and family by it when I conducted my own tours.

I can't imagine that any lover of film noir has missed Double Indemnity.  If you haven't seen it, please do.

Here's a peek:

Next posting:

A big 40s western