Review of Double Indemnity (1973) by Eric K — 07 Apr 2010

This is THE American film noir. Gripping, taut, clever, dark, and perfectly acted, "Double Indemnity" is also a movie that presages and encapsulates its era. Many have written about the post-war sense of paranoia that shadowed America in the mid-to-late 1940's, as the dark intentions of our WWII Soviet allies became all too clear.

The sense that perhaps there are no good guys, that no one is to be trusted, and that darkness lies beneath every gleaming surface is everywhere here in Billy Wilder's masterpiece. An essential element of the film's pessimism is its beginning, which is in fact an ending--insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is gravely injured, hobbling into his office to dictate a confession to his boss (Edward G.

Robinson). The Dietrichson case, accident and double indemnity, was indeed a murder, as suspected. Only the wrong suspect was pursued. I'm giving away nothing by revealing Neff as the real killer.

"I did it for money, and for a woman. Only I didn't get the money, and I didn't get the woman." Indeed, by the end, Neff no longer wants the treacherous Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck, amazingly enticing and poisonous here).

Neff has been a fool, and a tool, and discovers through his disastrous caper that he may be rotten, only Phyllis is "a little more rotten." They have conspired to kill Phyllis' husband for the insurance payoff, the oldest scheme in the book, but as an insider Neff has plotted an ingenious chronology of events to throw off any investigation.

Knowing from the outset though that the plan will fall apart lends the proceedings their whole doomed appeal. We know that this will be a world without happy endings or heroes. People are unpredictable, fate is cruel, and stylish dialogue exchanges mask deep inner desperation.

Phyllis has secrets, you see, and some are all too willing to talk. Neff will learn the hard way what every general knows: a battle plan collapses the minute the battle starts. He will find himself spinning different stories for different people, desperately back-peddaling and dashing around, under, and ahead of the investigation, Phyllis' enemies, and the vixen herself.

The byplay between the leads is witty to say the least, and their chemistry sizzles, as of course it must in all doomed romances. It's telling that both the angel (Robinson, playing boss and best friend Keyes) and devil (Phyllis) in Neff's life offer him a path towards his future.

He can choose a promotion and years pushing paper behind a desk with Keyes, or he can go for the easy woman and the easy money. Unfortunately, Neff will learn that he lives in a world where nothing comes easy but trouble, and where endings are inevitable but not necessarily happy.