Double Indemnity [1944]

 When Billy Wilder adapted James M. Cain’s spare, sordid and sizzling hardboiled novel – and seminal roman noir – of lust, greed, obsession and murder, and teamed up with Raymond Chandler for its script, the resulting work became a foundational film noir that – along with The Maltese Falcon, Laura and Murder, My Sweet – led to French critic Nino Frank’s legendary coinage of this filmmaking style. Its cultural impact has been particularly massive, as it provided the blueprint for crime movies for generations to come – viz. a seemingly regular Joe getting drawn by a sultry and duplicitous femme fatale into committing murder. When hotshot insurance salesman Walter (Fred MacMurray) chances upon Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck), a bored and frustrated woman stuck in a loveless marriage, he’s immediately smitten by her seductive allure. It’s therefore only a matter of time before he’s plotting and executing her boorish oilman husband’s death in order to jointly bag a hefty insurance payout. The perfect murder, however, starts unravelling before long, on account of growing mutual suspicions, and an astute claims investigator, Barton (Edward G. Robinson), with an uncanny ability to sniff out fraudulent and felonious cases. In one of a few fascinating departures from the source novel, Wilder filmed the tale via flashbacks, accompanied by Walter’s voiceover drenched in fatalism and addressed to his dear friend Barton. Shot in moody and expressionistic B/W by John F. Seitz – “He went to the limits of what could be done”, through his extensive use of dark shadows, atmospheric “Venetian blind” lighting and oblique camera angles – and scored by Miklós Rózsa, Wilder revised both the book and the script’s climaxes, and even reshot the entire ending, to achieve his specific vision.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review can be found here.

Director: Billy Wilder

Genre: Crime Thriller/Film Noir

Language: English

Country: US