Review of Double Indemnity (1944) by Brendan W — 21 Aug 2010

If you pray to the film gods, Double Indemnity is one of the alters at which you must worship. I just rewatched it for my top 100, and yeah, it makes the cut...again. It's not often that a single film creates a genre, and this one did exactly that, ushering in brilliantly one of the best genres movies can offer, film noir. Everything about it is A+, from Billy Wilder's direction to the lead performances by Fred MacMurrary, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, to the great score from Miklos Rozsa, and of course the innovative, stylistic cinematography by John F. Seitz. Then there's the script, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. It's one of the top 10 scripts ever written, and top 5 all-time if you're just talking about great dialogue.

There hasn't been a truly great film noir since L.A. Confidential in 1997. This is a genre that badly needs a comeback.