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Instant Obsession: Double Indemnity (1944)
Review Copyright Roger Zotti, 2002
Double Indemnity is insurance agent Walter Neff's story: It's a confession to Barton Keyes, his friend and superior.
Director Billy Wilder's film, one of the best films noir ever, is about greed, lust, murder, and an insurance scam.
"Double Indemnity marked the first time a Hollywood film explicitly explored the means, motives and opportunity of committing murder," wrote Eddie Muller in Dark World: The Lost World of Film Noir. "...it's about people throwing away their established lives on the one big risk they think will transform their mundane existence."
In a terrific performance Fred MacMurray plays Neff, a gullible, self-destructive insurance salesman. Barbara Stanwyck, who one critic said wasn't a great actress but never gave a bad performance, plays an icy, treacherous murderess named Phyllis Dietrichson. At his scene stealing best, Edward G. Robinson is Keyes, a wily insurance investigator.
Despite his outward glibness, Neff takes little satisfaction from his job. But after meeting Phyllis he becomes, in the poet Ovid's words, "...the puppet of instant obsession."
Maybe it's her gaudy anklet and blond wig that puts Neff over the edge. Whatever it is, he goes along with her plan to murder her wealthy husband. Of course, they're positive they can make the crime look like an accident. Then they'll collect on the policy and take off and live happily ever after together.
It's Walter's chance for a new kind of life. After all, Phyliss has everything figured out. Nothing can go wrong. Or can it?
Throughout the film, Neff always has a match ready to light Keyes' cigar. The ritual changes, however, in the final, standout scene. Mortally wounded, Neff tells Keyes - who is from the start suspicious about the way Phyllis's husband died - the reason why he couldn't pin down Phyliss's accomplice. "...the guy you were looking for was too close," he says. Keyes proceeds to light Neff's cigarette.
The dramatically trenchant scene rounds out the film, leaving no loose ends. Wilder was very proud of it.
Novelist Raymond Chandler co-wrote the screenplay with Wilder.
Stanwyck credited cinematographer John Seitz with enhancing her performance and creating the film's mood. "...for an actress," she said, "let me tell you the way those sets were lit, the house, Walter's apartment, those dark shadows, those slices of harsh light at strange angles - alll that helped my performance."
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