Double Indemnity (1944)
Written by Billy Wilder & Raymond Chandler
Directed by Billy Wilder
1998 List Ranking: 38
2007 List Ranking: 29
The last noir film on this list, The Maltese Falcon, left a lot to be desired for me. I’ve seen a few good noirs across these various lists, but I’ve also seen some equally bad ones. Which just leaves me to say that I’m a little bummed that I liked Double Indemnity as much as I did, because now I need to wait for the other shoe to drop for the next noir film that I’ll probably despise.
Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray
Double Indemnity follows insurance salesman Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray, as he gets caught up in an idea presented by the sensual and lonely housewife Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck: to kill her husband and claim a double indemnity (aka: double payout) clause in his life insurance (which he doesn’t even have yet). Resistant at first, he is (not very) slowly tempted by both the money and, more importantly, Mrs. Dietrichson, and soon finds himself in a web where not everyone is as they seem and he has to stay two steps ahead.
So, let’s get the major verdict out of the way: despite its issues (of which, honestly, there aren’t many), I really enjoyed this film. Yes, there are things that seem a bit ridiculous, but the film is an excellent roller coaster of a thrill ride, knowing just how and when to turn the screws on both its characters and its audience.
Barbara Stanwyck
The film’s two leads, MacMurray and Stanwyck, do an excellent job in their roles: their instantly flirtatious relationship is thrilling and sensual (if not a little TOO instantaneous: five minutes after meeting each other and you’d swear these two are ready to hit the sheets. It’s not entirely unrealistic, but good lord, do they treat everyone they meet this way? How do they get any work done?). There is a real pleasure in watching Stanwyck mentally navigate how to make MacMurray understand that she wants her husband dead without having to say the words, a nice little mini-chess game in service to the bigger game being played. Her twist reveal at the end of the film isn’t quite believable, but she still does a great job.
Fred MacMurray, framed by typical noir lighting, symbolically representing prison bars
MacMurray likewise is definite fun to watch as he toys with her: he knows what she wants, but he’s also reluctant to say it and also enjoys the tension it places on her. His decision to help feels a little sudden, but there is a passage of time that is handled a little weirdly that covers it. Once (SPOILER ALERT) the husband is dead, the rest of the film is a great chance for MacMurray to silently panic as different threads of his perfectly planned…plan…begin to unravel and people start asking questions that he doesn’t want asked.
Mrs. Dietrichson is nearly caught by the lead investigator
It’s all a great example of how director Wilder, whose film The Lost Weekend was my first mature exposure to noir (and which I loved), expertly keeps the tension mounting. I’ve used the term roller coaster before to describe great tension, and Wilder does it here with perfection: raising the stakes, making the audience prepare for something bad, and then releasing it, letting the tension dissipate for a moment before beginning the long, inexorable climb to the top again. The pace of the film feels nice and consistent, and the tension reaches just the right levels before being relieved; some films don’t know when to stop (there’s a film coming up near the end of this list that I’m not looking forward to because of that), but this film does a great job at balancing it out.
The plot begins
Of course, the film isn’t perfect: the subplot of Mrs. Dietrichson’s adopted daughter’s relationship feels unimportant in the grand scheme of the film (and while I understand why it’s there, it still feels a little too irrelevant, a little too much to add on to the motive). Even more strange, the insurance company, not the police, are the ones unraveling what happened to Mr. Dietrichson, which…if you suspected murder, shouldn’t you GET the police involved? I know the police already ruled the case closed, but once the question of murder is arrived at, and with as strong a suspicion as they have, why shouldn’t the police get involved? It’s not something I realized until late into the movie, but the police are barely in the film (or even at all, if I remember correctly), it’s just insurance agents acting like hardened detectives.
Double Indemnity has the strange honor of being the first Hollywood film to explicitly show the motive, the means, and the opportunity needed to commit a murder. That it does it so well seems like a bizarre compliment, but Wilder and his actors make the film so compelling that the viewer can’t wait to see how it ends, good or bad. There have been numerous imitators in the years since, some of which are rather good and successful, but seeing where the form took a leap forward is a fun addition to the tension-filled ride that this film takes its audience on.
FINAL GRADE: A
