{"id":15858,"date":"2014-07-31T21:11:26","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T11:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15858"},"modified":"2014-07-31T21:14:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T11:14:00","slug":"double-indemnity-1944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=15858","title":{"rendered":"Double Indemnity [1944]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"doubleindemnity\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Billy Wilder
\nWriter:\u00a0 <\/strong>Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler
\nCast:\u00a0 <\/strong>Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson<\/p>\n

A<\/span>s screen writing credits go, you don’t get much bigger names in the Forties than the pairing of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler.\u00a0 Wilder is a Hollywood legend with an output of films that were of an improbably high standard across a number of different genres.\u00a0 Then you have Raymond Chandler, a literary giant who only produced eight books in his lifetime but his hard boiled crime detective characters and stylistic prose basically set the foundations for an entire genre.\u00a0 Their collaborative efforts on Double Indemnity<\/em> do not disappoint.\u00a0 This is a true film noir classic.<\/p>\n

The film begins with the longest and most protracted death scene in cinematic history.\u00a0 It’s an unwritten rule of film noir that you have a narrator and in this instance that person is insurance salesman Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray.\u00a0 Neff gets mortally wounded by a gunshot and then he walks outside, has a conversation with a young man, drives to work in his car, walks into his office, dictates a murder confession that takes ninety minutes to explain and then he keels over dead.<\/p>\n

Neff is an ordinary jobsworth who has worked in insurance sales all his life.\u00a0 He has the admiration and trust of his boss Barton Keyes who wants to lure him into a desk job sniffing out insurance fraud but Neff’s passion is for being on the road and selling.<\/p>\n

His life takes a twist when he visits the home of oil baron Mr Dietrichson with the intention of renewing his auto insurance.\u00a0 Dietrichson is away but his bored, lonely housewife Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) sure isn’t.\u00a0 She makes a memorable first appearance at the top of the stairwell wearing nothing but a towel.\u00a0 Neff’s eyes light up and even though its 1944 and the Code placed pretty tight guidelines around what actors could say onscreen, Wilder and Chandler’s innuendo laden dialogue shines through.\u00a0 “I’d hate to see you get a smashed fender when you’re not fully covered” remarks Neff.<\/p>\n

\"stanwyck\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t believe Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck were ever a real life item but their chemistry onscreen is fantastic.\u00a0 Neff’s body language and twinkling gaze signal his intentions for all to see and Stanwyck, for her part, hits just the right notes as the coy femme fatale who draws Neff into her web.\u00a0 They talk in doublespeak, saying one thing, inferring another.\u00a0 I’ve never heard a sexier conversation about insurance paperwork and contract renewal in my life.<\/p>\n

I love this exchange in particular:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?<\/em><\/p>\n

Phyllis: I’d say around ninety.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.<\/em><\/p>\n

Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take.<\/em><\/p>\n

Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.<\/em><\/p>\n

Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter Neff: That tears it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"sup\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Naturally the two get together but that is only the beginning.\u00a0 Neff lusts after Phyllis but she is ultimately unattainable with her husband in the picture.\u00a0 Phyllis gladly spoon feeds him an idea to change all that.\u00a0 She makes herself out to be a lonely and miserable house wife, trapped with no where to go and no money of her own.\u00a0 She suggests a life insurance policy be taken out on her husband against his knowledge.\u00a0 Neff concocts a policy with a clause that pays double in the event of an accident.\u00a0 Together they hatch a plan.\u00a0 But not before Neff relieves some stress by going to a drive-thru pub<\/em> where you can chill in your car and drink beer (!).<\/p>\n

\"doubleindemnitydrink\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Neff and Phyllis succeed in staging Mr Dietrichson’s death but there’s two things they don’t count on.\u00a0 First, there’s a witness on a train that asks too many questions and threatens to spoil their elaborately constructed suicide.\u00a0 Second, Neff’s boss Barton Keyes smells a rat.\u00a0 Keyes is played by Edward G Robinson who plays the part with relish.\u00a0 Keyes is a proud of his intuition when assessing insurance claims and he proudly defers to the innate sense of ‘the little man’ inside him who knows when something isn’t right.\u00a0 The second half of the film is wrought with tension as the net closes in on Neff and Phyllis and they begin to panic and turn on one another.<\/p>\n

Double Indemnity<\/em> is a much loved classic of American cinema and with good reason.\u00a0 The film is hugely influential in establishing the visual language, the personalities and the soul of noir cinema.\u00a0 Neff and Phyllis are captivating leads who wear a vulnerability on their sleeve when they pine for one another but are quick to turn ruthless and cold blooded when their plans fall away and their personal liberty becomes compromised.\u00a0 Keyes is admirably single minded in tracking down the truth to Mr Dietrichson’s death, seemingly unaware that the culprit is the very man he bounces ideas off of to try and solve the case.\u00a0 Even though Neff, Phyllis and Keyes are all pitted against one another at various stages, I found myself willing on all three.<\/p>\n

Double Indemnity<\/em> was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won zero.\u00a0 Perhaps its dark and nihilistic soul was too much for an Academy who just two years prior showered recognition on Casablanca<\/em>, an equally wonderful film but one that is infinitely more optimistic and wide eyed.\u00a0 Double Indemmnity<\/em> is a nasty film about selfish people doing unspeakable things to get what they desire.\u00a0 It’s the essence of film noir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An insurance salesman falls in love with the wife of an oil baron and together they plot his murder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1800,5],"tags":[2023,1863,1067,2022],"class_list":["post-15858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-films","tag-barbara-stanwyck","tag-billy-wilder","tag-film-noir","tag-fred-macmurray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16005,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15858\/revisions\/16005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}