Double Indemnity - Film (Movie) Plot and Review

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USA, 1944

Director: Billy Wilder

Production: Paramount Pictures; 1944; black and white, 355mm; running time: 107 minutes. Released 7 September 1944. Filmed 27 September-24 November 1943 in Paramount studios, and on location in Jerry's Market in Los Angeles.

Producer: Joseph Sistrom; screenplay: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, from the novel 3 of a Kind by James M. Cain; photography: John F. Sitz; editor: Doane Harrison; sound: Stanley Cooley; art director: Hal Pereira; supervisor: Hans Dreier; set decoration: Bertram Granger; music: Miklos Rozsa; costume designer: Edith Head.

Cast: Fred MacMurray ( Walter Neff ); Barbara Stanwyck ( Phyllis Dietrichson ); Edward G. Robinson ( Barton Keyes ); Porter Hall ( Mr. Jackson ); Jean Heather ( Lola Dietrichson ); Tom Powers ( Mr. Dietrichson ); Byron Barr ( Nino Zachette ); Richard Gaines ( Mr. Norton ); Fortunio Bonanova ( Sam Gorlopis ); John Philliber ( Joe Pete ); Clarence Muse ( Black man ).

Publications

Script:

Chandler, Raymond, and Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity , in Best Film Plays 1945 , edited by John Gassner and Dudley Nichols, New York, 1946.

Books:

Del Buono, Oreste, Billy Wilder , Parma, 1958.

Madsen, Axel, Billy Wilder , Bloomington, Indiana, 1969.

Wood, Tom, The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily , New York, 1970.

Smith, Ella, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck , New York, 1973.

Vermilye, Jerry, Barbara Stanwyck , New York, 1975.

Zolotow, Maurice, Billy Wilder in Hollywood , New York, 1977.

Seidman, Steve, The Film Career of Billy Wilder , Boston, 1977.

Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, editors, Film Noir , Woodstock, New York, 1979.

Sinyard, Neil, and Adrian Turner, Journey Down Sunset Boulevard:

The Films of Billy Wilder , Ryde, Isle of Wight, 1979.

Kaplan, E. Ann, editor, Women in Film Noir , London, 1980.

Dick, Bernard F., Billy Wilder , Boston, 1980.

Ciment, Michel, Les Conquérants d'un nouveau monde: Essais sur le cinéma américain , Paris, 1981.

Giannetti, Louis, Masters of the American Cinema , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1981.

Jacob, Jerome, Billy Wilder , Paris, 1988.

Seidl, Claudius, Billy Wilder: Seine Filme, sein Leben , Munich, 1988.

Schickel, Richard, Double Indemnity , London, 1992.

Phillips, Gene D., Exiles in Hollywood: Major European Film Directors in America , Bethlehem, 1998.

Sikov, Ed., On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder , New York, 1998.

Wilder, Billy, Conversations with Wilder , with Cameron Crowe, New York, 1999.

Articles:

Variety (New York), 26 April 1944.

New York Times , 7 September 1944.

Pryor, Thomas, "End of a Journey," in New York Times , 23 September 1945.

Luft, Herbert, and Charles Brackett, "Two Views of a Director: Billy Wilder," in Quarterly of Radio, Television, and Film (Berkeley), Fall 1952.

McVay, Douglas, "The Eye of a Cynic," in Films and Filming (London), January 1960.

Domarchi, Jean, and Jean Douchet, "Entretien avec Billy Wilder," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), August 1962.

Higham, Charles, "Cast a Cold Eye: The Films of Billy Wilder," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1963.

Ringgold, Gene, "Barbara Stanwyck," in Films in Review (New York), December 1963.

Ciment, Michel, "Sept réflexions sur Billy Wilder," in Positif (Paris), May 1971.

Farber, Stephen, "The Films of Billy Wilder," in Film Comment (New York), Winter 1971.

Ecran (Paris), July 1972.

Bourget, Jean-Loup, "Le Dernier Carré," in Positif (Paris), April 1973.

Jensen, Paul, "Raymond Chandler and the World You Live In," in Film Comment (New York), November-December 1974.

Corliss, Richard, "The Author-Auteurs," in Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema , New York, 1975.

Borde, Raymond, and E. Chaumeton, in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 1 October 1979.

Leese, Elizabeth, in Magill's Survey of Cinema 1 , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1980.

Bernts, T., "Film noir: Fiktie in de fiktie," in Skrien (Amsterdam), November-December 1984.

Alsted, C., "Kvinder uden samvittighed—en arketypisk film noir," in Kosmorama (Copenhagen), July 1985.

Buchsbaum, J., "Tame Wolves and Phony Claims: Paranoia and Film Noir," in Persistence of Vision (Maspeth, New York), Summer 1986.

Gallagher, B., "Sexual Warfare and Homoeroticism in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity ," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 15, no. 4, 1987.

Combs, Richard, in Listener (London), 4 June 1987.

Rozgonyi, J., "The Making of Double Indemnity ," in Films in Review (New York), June-July 1990.

Pichler, O. H., "Some Like It Black," in Blimp (Graz, Austria), Fall 1991.

Marling, W., "On the Relation Between American Roman Noir and Film Noir," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), no. 3, 1993.

Biesen, S.C., "Censorship, Film Noir, and Double Indemnity ," in Film & History , no. 25, 1995.

Ross, Tony, "Updated Noir," in Creative Screenwriting (Washington, D.C.), Spring 1995.

Naremore, James, "Making and Remaking Double Indemnity ," in Film Comment (New York), January-February 1996.

Arthur, P., "Los Angeles as Scene of the Crime," in Film Comment (New York), July/August 1996.

Armstrong, R., " Double Indemnity : An American Tragedy," in Audience (Simi Valley), February/March 1997.

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Although James M. Cain's memorable novel of crime and passion, The Postman Always Rings Twice , predated his equally potent, similarly themed Double Indemnity by almost a decade, it is Indemnity that has proven the more influential, due largely to the uncompromising and suspenseful film writer-director Billy Wilder made from it. Wilder's film remains the model for just about every film noir of this type ( Born to Kill , The Prowler , The Pushover , Body Heat , et al.) to come our way since.

Cain's novel was translated to the screen with the full force of the author's ugly tale of lust, greed, and murder intact. In fact, the film version is in many ways tougher than its source. Wilder's intention to make it so prompted his longtime partner, writer-producer Charles Brackett, to back away from the project even though he and Wilder were one of Hollywood's most successful teams. Brackett found Cain's book distasteful and felt the film would be little more than a "dirty movie." He told Wilder to get another collaborator. Wilder tried to get Cain himself, but the author was busy on another project, and Wilder opted for Raymond Chandler instead.

Chandler detested working with Wilder and disliked the final film. Cain on the other hand totally approved of what Wilder had done to his book, even considered it an improvement. The two works are certainly different. In addition to changing the names of Cain's main characters (in the book they are Walter Huff and Phyllis Nirdlinger), Wilder changed the ending and altered other aspects of the story as well. Whereas Cain unfolded his tale in a linear manner, Wilder revealed the fate of his protagonist in the opening scene. Insurance investigator MacMurray arrives at his office mortally wounded and confesses into the dictaphone of his colleague, Robinson, the murder plot and insurance scam gone awry that led to MacMurray's downfall. Wilder cuts back to the dying MacMurray several times, but for the most part the film unfolds as a series of flashbacks showing how MacMurray got embroiled with femme fatale Stanwyck in a scheme to murder her oilman husband, make it look like an accident, collect a bundle on the husband's double indemnity claim, and run away together. But when their scheme began to unravel, their relationship fell apart, and they wound up shooting each other. (In the book, the lovers get away with the crime because the Robinson character who is hot on their trail has no proof, but are doomed anyway due to their growing mistrust of one another.)

Cain loosely based his novel on the real-life Roaring Twenties case of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray who conspired to murder Snyder's husband for $100,000 in insurance money. Snyder and Gray were caught and went to the chair. An enterprising newspaper reporter smuggled a camera into the execution chamber and snapped a shot of Snyder moments before the juice was turned on. The ghoulish shot caused a furor when it was published in the paper. Wilder wanted to end his film with a similar scene showing MacMurray's execution in California's gas chamber. The scene was shot, but Wilder decided against using it; he felt it to be too strong and anticlimactic as well. He replaced it with the trenchantly written and beautifully performed final confrontation scene between the self-destructive MacMurray and the fatherly Robinson that movingly concludes this exceptionally fine and biting film noir. As MacMurray slumps to the floor, he tells Robinson how he'd been able to elude the dogged investigator. "Because the guy you were looking for was too close, Keyes. Right across the desk from you." "Closer than that," Robinson responds emotionally as the film fades to black.

—John McCarty