Double Indemnity (1944)

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray

'Double Indemnity', is a dramatic thriller made in 1944, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. It is consistently praised as a triumph of the art of film-making, and with good reason. It is generally classed as a 'film noir', and indeed many aspects of it belong to that school but it holds it own as a classic movie in its own right.

The screenplay was co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and was based on James M. Cain's 1935 novella of the same title which originally appeared as an eight part serial in Liberty magazine, and which, in turn, was based on a real-life assassination in New York in 1927, when a wife and her lover killed the husband for his insurance money. The movie title refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies which doubles the claim in cases when death is accidental.

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The casting was brilliant and was of a kind that changed Hollywood. Three of the main protagonists play roles which are completely different to their normally perceived movie personas. Barbara Stanwyck was at first reluctant play such a nasty piece of work as Phyllis Dietrichson, the provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead, but then she saw that it made her a better all-round actress.

Similarly, Fred MacMurray normally plays a Disney, genial nice-guy but he looked a better and better actor as the years passed, and here, as Walter Neff, the insurance salesman, he plays to the hilt a complete heel, his smooth salesman's talk a cover for lechery, larceny and murderous intent.

The film is really held together by the wonderful Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes, the claims adjuster whose job it is to find phony claims. A good guy, and not a gangster for a change, he is a fussy little treat, nagging away at detail and looking for his matches. It is an injustice why both Robinson and MacMurray were denied Academy Award nominations.

Although the movie received no Academy Awards, it was nominated in seven categories including Best Picture, Best Actress (Barbara Stanwyck), Best Director (Wilder), and Best Screenplay (Chandler and Wilder). It would appear that its dark undertones, and cynical, and sleazy subject matter at a time of wartime national crisis affected its chances of a top prize, the major competition coming from the 'happy' film 'Going My Way'.

Nevertheless in 2007 'Double Indemnity' was ranked at number 29 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century and in 1992 it was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

When Walter drives away from the Dietrichson household, he muses in voice-over, 'How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?' This striking juxtaposition of the foul and the sweet is not a bad emblem for film noir generally. Even though, noir is difficult to define precisely, we could call it beautiful filmmaking about ugliness.

'Double Indemnity' is most certainly beautiful filmmaking. It is a flawlessly constructed masterpiece created by the genius of Billy Wilder, an extraordinary example of just how good a movie can be.