WHAT: Double Indemnity (1944)
WHEN: September 18, 2024 1 PM & 7 PM
WHERE: Pickwick Theatre, Park Ridge, IL
WHAT ELSE: Pre-show music by organist Jay Warren at 6:30 PM
HOW MUCH: $12/$10 advance or $10 for the 1 PM matinee
Advance Tickets: Click Here!
“Suddenly it came over me that everything would go wrong. It sounds crazy, Keyes, but it’s true, so help me. I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man.” ~Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray)
On September 18, 2024, Park Ridge becomes Noir Town, U.S.A., when we proudly present an 80th anniversary screening of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944). The film is acknowledged as one of the defining examples of film noir. In fact, the general consensus is that Double Indemnity is– if not the greatest– certainly in the top five greatest noirs. But beyond the definition of noir, it’s just a great work of pure cinema.
For the benefit of those less familiar with the term, what is film noir exactly? Film noir or “black film” is a French term describing the dark side of American movies throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Noir was the perfect hybrid of German Expressionist cinematography and the hard-boiled tradition of pulp fiction. Noir inhabited a certain time frame in American cinema and reflected the growing cynicism prevalent in a post-war America.
The classic period is generally considered to have begun in 1941 with The Maltese Falcon and lasting until 1958’s Touch of Evil. Many of these creative films were more ambiguous extensions of the 1930s gangster dramas, but noir is not a genre. It’s a visual style that incorporates more than just crime films. The style, made up of such elements as low-key lighting, night settings, and compositional tension, can be found in many genres, from horror films to Westerns.
Filmmakers did not set out to make film noir and were not even aware of the term or of the conventions modern audiences now associate with it. What filmmakers depicted onscreen at the time was merely their subconscious response to the reality of world affairs. Some of the subjects the films addressed included disillusionment, paranoia, alienation, and sexual obsession. The themes had their hard-boiled roots in the works of authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich and James M. Cain (author of Double Indemnity).
Many of the onscreen crime dramas were the progeny of these American writers. However, there was a distinctly European influence as well on how these stories were translated to the screen. The stylistics owe much to the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, and many of the filmmakers had come from Germany and Eastern Europe: directors like Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Billy Wilder.
Included in this group of craftsmen are cinematographers such as John Alton, whose visions of light helped define the visual grammar of film noir. Economics, if not the artistic intentions of the filmmakers, also had a lot to do with how the films were made. Some of the best were “B” movies shot cheaply at smaller studios like RKO. Often, the style transcended their story– how the stories were told could be far more interesting than what they told. The movies of this period in the ’40s and ’50s reflected a shadowy world where the stylistics of Expressionist lighting could meet the realism of on-location shooting.
My introduction to Double Indemnity came in 1994 in a Film Noir course at Columbia College Chicago taught by Scott Marks. Those were the days when you watched films on either 16mm or, in some cases, laserdisc. The classroom was actually a little theatre with a projection booth in the back. Double Indemnity was one of the first films on the syllabus. What immediately stood out to me was the dialogue and the snappy back and forth between Fred MacMurray’s smitten insurance salesman and Barbara Stanwyck’s calculating housewife.
Phyllis: Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty. He’ll be in then.
Walter Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I’d say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.
Double Indemnity speaks the language of noir. The screenplay was by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Wilder had worked as a screenwriter throughout the 1930s, often with his frequent collaborator, Charles Brackett. The two had written such screwball comedies as Midnight (1939), Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941), which starred Barbara Stanwyck. This time, however, Brackett had passed on the James M. Cain story, finding it vulgar.
Double Indemnity was James M. Cain’s variation of his earlier The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). Cain, a former reporter, had based his story on a real life murder case from the 1920s dealing with a wife who plotted the death of her husband. Double Indemnity was more a novella than a straight novel and was originally serialized in Liberty magazine in 1936. In 1943, it was published as part of an anthology of Cain’s novellas called Three of a Kind. When the book made the rounds in Hollywood via Cain’s agent, it caught the attention of Paramount and Billy Wilder.
Wilder knew that Raymond Chandler’s writing was similar to Cain’s and so was offered the job. Chandler, the creator of private eye Philip Marlowe, has been called the poet laureate of Los Angeles. He knew the town and its atmosphere. His stories reflect the hard-boiled tradition that was in keeping with the original source material.
As has often been told, Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did not get along at all during the four months they spent together adapting the Cain story. They were two very different personalities: Wilder, the extrovert, paired with the more introspective Chandler. Wilder didn’t like Chandler’s smoking pipe. Chandler didn’t like Wilder wearing a hat as though he were about to leave the room at any moment. But Wilder knew, despite the tension between them, that Chandler had a gift for dialogue.
On the set of Double Indemnity with director Billy Wilder.
Billy Wilder’s original intent was to simply use Cain’s dialogue, but Chandler insisted that the Cain dialogue wouldn’t translate to the screen. When Wilder had actors read the Cain dialogue out loud, he realized that Chandler, despite being a novice at screenwriting, was indeed right. Together they improved upon Cain’s story, such as removing the double suicide (which never would’ve worked under the Production Code) and strengthening the character of Phyllis. In their version, she was more in control and not simply an object of desire who, during one stretch in the novella, pretty much disappears from the scene.
Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is an insurance salesman who becomes infatuated with an unhappy wife, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). When Phyllis inquires about accident insurance for her husband, Neff knows the direction she’s headed. He leaves her house, but his desire for her gets the better of him. He comes up with a scheme so that they can knock off the husband and collect the insurance money. Standing in the way is Neff’s friend and boss, Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), the claims manager whose “little man” inside helps him identify suspicious claims. But is Phyllis simply motivated to get out of an abusive relationship or is she the quintessential black widow?
On the “Jerry’s Market” set of Double Indemnity.
Several studios had competed for the rights to make Double Indemnity years before, but with the Production Code being enforced at that time, they were advised to not even attempt it given the story’s lurid content. By the 1940s, the country’s mood had changed with America embroiled in a World War. Though the Code still shaped Hollywood movies, director Billy Wilder believed now was the time to tell this story. He felt he could do it by working around the Code. He was the type of person who, if told not to do something, would go ahead and do it anyway.
From the beginning, Barbara Stanwyck was the desired choice for Phyllis Dietrichson. She was one of the finest actresses (and highest paid) in Hollywood. Stanwyck had that rare ability to make audiences believe in just about anything. Wilder knew this, so he visually indicated her character was a phony and cheap by devising the idea of the blonde wig and ankle bracelet. Much has been made of Stanwyck’s wig for this movie with the Paramount production head, Buddy DeSylva, famously quipping, “We hired Barbara Stanwyck, and here we get George Washington.”
Stanwyck was originally hesitant to take on the role of a killer, but Wilder goaded her, “Well, are you a mouse or an actress?” One of her best scenes, and one of the most famous moments in film noir cinema, is the close-up on her face while her husband is being murdered. Since Double Indemnity, Stanwyck went on to appear in many other films noir such as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The File on Thelma Jordan (1950) and Clash By Night (1952), among others.
Several actors had turned down the part of Walter Neff, including George Raft, who seemingly turned down every good part offered to him. Fred MacMurray was likewise reluctant to take on the role, perhaps undervaluing his own range. He believed he was relegated to light comedy in the type of roles that paired him with leading ladies like Claudette Colbert. But the part of Walter Neff provided him with perhaps the best role of his career. Those who grew up knowing MacMurray as The Absent-Minded Professor or as the father in My Three Sons might be surprised at his turn here. His character is amiable, but he also has an edge. Neff is someone who, perhaps deep down, wants to challenge the system and put one over on his boss. In this regard, he represented Wilder himself who was finding a way to beat the system (Hollywood censorship) with this film.
Edward G. Robinson gives the third great performance in the film as Keyes. At this point in his career, Robinson was beginning to transition to character roles. He is outstanding in Double Indemnity. Unlike MacMurray, who reportedly had issues with some of his speeches, Robinson was able to recite large chunks of dialogue in one take. He was flawless in his execution. Though the plot of the film is built around the lust between Neff and Phyllis, the relationship that has the real resonance in the film is the friendship between Neff and Keyes,
Besides the script and the performances, another key aspect of the film that immediately stands out is the cinematography by John Seitz. In fact, Stanwyck had credited Seitz with enhancing her performance. He did this by creating a mood on the set. She was able to fall into character more easily based on his lighting of the scene. Double Indemnity features many of the visual tropes of film noir, such as lighting with Venetian blinds (suggesting imprisonment) and dark shadows. There are moments in the film that are almost totally black with characters operating with very minimal lighting. Seitz was a master of his craft whose career went back to the silent days when he worked with directors like Rex Ingram..
There had been earlier examples of film noir, films such as Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and The Maltese Falcon (1941), but Double Indemnity was the first to synthesize all the classic elements into one film: the voiceover narration– the film uses a framing device and is told in flashback– the femme fatale, the hard-boiled dialogue, the atmospheric lighting and the thematically dark ending. Unlike most films of the era, Double Indemnity makes the daring move to turn the protagonists into the villains. The film is told from their perspective.
Double Indemnity was an “A” picture from Paramount that paved the way for everything that followed. It gave a legitimacy to darker films of this nature. It even inspired cheaper “B” movie knock-offs like Apology For Murder (1945). Double Indemnity was a box office hit and received high praise from critics. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. However, it lost to another Paramount film, Leo McCarey’s Going My Way.
Double Indemnity was not Wilder’s first directorial assignment, but it was his first great film in a career that would have many. It was also his first attempt to make a thriller that could rival the best of Hitchcock. Wilder’s next film would be The Lost Weekend, which was inspired by his relationship with the alcoholic Raymond Chandler; it would win Wilder his first Academy Awards for writing and directing.
~MCH
Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck
Production still from the deleted alternate ending…
