In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
I didn’t see many movies growing up, but when my family did pile in the station wagon to go to the drive-in, we usually saw a Disney comedy offering nothing to offend even the most timid Midwestern soul (revisionist interpretations lay decades in the future). Several of those films starred Fred MacMurray so I grew up thinking of him as the goofy but harmless Ned Brainerd in The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and Son of Flubber (1963). Imagine my surprise to learn, at an age when I could choose for myself what films to watch (and had moved to a city where repertory theatres regularly screened classic films) that he also was the protagonist of perhaps the definitive film noir, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity.
Don’t @ me about my characterization of Wilder’s film: I have the backing of the Czar of Noir himself (Eddie Muller) as well as the distinguished film historian Imogen Sara Smith. And if you prefer to give a different film that honorary title, I’m good with that because film criticism is not like doing elementary math problems where there’s only one correct answer. And Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler, based on James M. Cain’s novel of the same name, should get bonus points for making such an enduringly fascinating film centered someone who works in the insurance industry, which is not the most promising subject to capture the popular imagination.
Double Indemnity is one of those films that is so well known that to offer a plot summary would seem both unnecessary and insulting. But I will say that there are three main characters in this film: insurance salesman Walter Neff (MacMurray), his old-school boss Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson; his character is called by his last name in the film), and Neff’s customer and love interest Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Keyes is a confirmed old bachelor whose scenes with Neff have more than a tinge of homoeroticism (all that business with the lighting of cigarettes!) while Neff is more of a “take them until you dump them” guy until he meets up with Stanwyck, who is as plainly phony as the dreadful blonde wig she wears.
Keyes remains straight (in the Boy Scout sense) throughout, Phyllis remains crooked and dangerous as a barrel of snakes, while Walter is the one who changes. At the start of the film he thinks he’s got it all figured out, enjoying his salesman’s commissions and his bachelor flat (complete with a “colored woman” who comes in to clean, since he can’t be bothered), until Phyllis plants an idea in his head that he can’t resist. Keyes is smart, but what if Walter is smarter and can pull off the ultimate insurance scam: collecting on a double indemnity clause for a policy on the husband of a really hot woman who is coming on to him? He thinks he will get the money and get the girl while cheating the corporation he works for, and that’s hitting the trifecta in the film noir world.
It’s no spoiler to say that that’s not how things work out, because this film begins near the end while most of the action is related in a flashback. Plus Double Indemnity is not about what happens so much as it is about how Wilder and his crew show it to you. The dialogue is some of the best ever written, with one of my favorite moments being when Walter and Phyllis use traffic laws to discuss their rapidly-forming relationship: “There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour. / How fast was I going, officer? / I’d say about ninety…”. And who can forget Keyes’ “little man” who tells him something is not right, or his response when his boss asks him if he finds the day uncomfortably warm?
John Seitz’s black and white cinematography is pure noir without taking the story to never-never land while location shooting in Los Angeles adds an extra dimension in an era when films were mostly shot in the studio. Edith Head’s costumes make Phyllis appear both cheap and more than you can afford at the same time, which is a perfect summation of her character. And yes, that wig was a deliberate choice: Stanwyck was such a great actress she could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge twice and you’d thank her for it, so an obvious visual sign was needed to signal her character’s phoniness. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1126
Technical details: 108 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.37:1 ; English.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray (2 discs)
Extras: audio commentary by Richard Schickel; interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg; conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith; documentary by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with Billy Wilder about many of his films; 2006 making-of documentary Shadows of Suspense; and radio versions of Double Indemnity by the Screen Guild Theatre (1945) and the Lux Radio Theatre (1950). The Criterion web site mentions a booklet with an essay by critic Angelica Jade Bastién, but it was missing from the library copy I reviewed.
Fun Fact: The story of Double Indemnity was based on the case of Ruth Snyder, who with the assistance of her lover Henry Judd Gray murdered her husband Albert after convincing him to purchase an insurance policy with a double indemnity clause for death by an act of violence. Snyder’s execution was well-known thanks to a mid-execution photo snapped by a hidden camera strapped to the ankle of Chicago Tribune reporter Tom Howard. Snyder was also the inspiration behind the character Bessie Denker in the novel and film The Bad Seed.
Parting Thought: Wilder had to be creative to work around the Hays Code, and many critics have argued that working within limitations drove him to higher levels of creativity since he couldn’t settle for literal depictions of the story. Granted that that may be the case for this particular film, does that argument justify censorship on a general basis or should we think of it more like working with a low budget, an inconvenience that can limit expression as well as spur creativity?
