Limited Edition

Double Indemnity Blu-ray Review

That Was No Lady; That Was My Femme Fatale

Reviewed by Michael Reuben, April 13, 2014

Director Billy Wilder said that he made Double Indemnity because the James M. Cain book he really wanted to film, The Postman Always Rings Twice , already belonged to Warner Brothers. Instead, Wilder adapted the novella that Cain published in serial form two years after Postman. Paramount hired crime novelist Raymond Chandler to co-write the screenplay and, as told many times in the years that followed, the writing partners clashed repeatedlybut they eventually turned out a screenplay so forceful that Cain became the rare author to express the view that Hollywood had improved on his book. Despite initial casting difficulties, because the material was pulpy and the main characters despicable, Wilder persuaded actors Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray to take the lead roles in what would become career-defining performances for both. He also persuaded Edward G. Robinson to accept third billing (for his usual salary), even though the actor was accustomed to starring roles. Robinson proceeded to steal every scene in which he appeared. In a career of memorable performances, it's one of his best. Double Indemnity is among those films that support the theory that Oscars are no badge of quality. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including screenplay, director and best picture, the film went home empty-handed, shut out in most categories by another Paramount offering, Leo McCarey's Going My Way . Now, Going My Way is a perfectly fine film, but it's no Double Indemnity. Few films are. Double Indemnity was previously released on Blu-ray in a region B-locked special edition as part of the "Masters of Cinema" series from Eureka Entertainment. Universal is now issuing the film in region A with what appears to be a different video presentation and a similar but not identical set of extras.Like The Postman Always Rings Twice , Double Indemnity takes the form of its lead character's confession. In Cain's novel, he writes it down, but Wilder and Chandler created the inspired device of having insurance salesman Walter Neff (MacMurray) dictate a memo to his colleague and friend, claims investigator Barton Keyes (Robinson). Obviously injured, Neff sits alone at night in his company's empty L.A. offices confessing his sins into a microphone. In words that neatly sum up the core of what would later be dubbed film noir, Neff says that he did it "for money and a womanand I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman." A routine call on a client named Dietrichson (Tom Powers) introduced Walter to the client's wife, Phyllis (Stanwyck). Before he knew what hit him, Walter found himself having an affair with the ambiguously attractive blonde, who poured out her marital woes. Almost as if he'd been waiting for the challenge, Walter agreed to help Phyllis murder her husband in such a way that she could collect on the accident policy they arranged for Dietrichson to acquire without his knowledge. The manner of death would trigger the policy's "double indemnity" clause, requiring the company to pay twice its stated value. Since Walter knows that his friend Keyes and his "little man" (as Keyes calls his intuition) will be all over the case looking for red flags, his planning is meticulous, and Wilder takes a Hitchcockian glee at drawing out the details so that the audience unwittingly sides with the murderers, becoming complicit in the successful planning and execution of their criminal scheme. (Lawrence Kasdan followed Wilder's template precisely almost forty years later in Body Heat , substituting inheritance for insurance.) At first they appear to be successful. Keyes's "little man" is initially quiet when Phyllis submits her claim. It's Walter who is changed by the experience. Immediately after killing Dietrichson, he somehow knows that he's doomed. Wilder manages the disintegration of Walter's scheme with the same precision as its execution. Keyes's "little man" wakes up, and the wily investigator begins digging. The dead man's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), seeks out Walter with accusations against Phyllis and revelations that cause Walter to see his beloved in a whole new light. Lola's hot-tempered boyfriend, Nino Zachetti (Byron Barr), becomes a person of interest to both Keyes and Walter, though for entirely different reasons. And the relationship between Phyllis and Walter rapidly deteriorates into suspicion and mutual recrimination. In the end, all Walter can do is stagger into his office and record everything for the only person he knows whose integrity is beyond question. Almost every aspect of Double Indemnity has been analyzed and commented upon at length, but one facet that is often underappreciated is the literacy of its script. Wilder could tell a story visually as well as anyone elsehe invented on the spot a wordless scene immediately following the murder that worked so well it has now become a cliche through imitationbut he also trusted the power of words. In Double Indemnity, he often has the actors speaking their dialogue at breakneck speed, almost as if they were playing a comedy, but the pace wouldn't work if the dialogue weren't so lucid and intelligent. A classic example is the scene in the office of insurance executive Edward S. Norton, Jr. (Richard Gaines), who summons Walter and Keyes to hear his theory that Mr. Dietrichson committed suicide, which wouldn't be covered under his policy. Keyes proceeds to destroy his boss's theory in a lengthy speech about actuarial tablesyes, actuarial tables. The phrase alone would make most people yawn, and today the speech would probably be cut from the script. But as written by Wilder (who got most of it from Cain) and forcefully delivered by Edward G. Robinson, the scene comes alive, because suddenly these things matter. If you set up the right dramatic context and choose the right words, even the driest subject becomes fascinating, and no one understood that better than Billy Wilder.