by Allan Fish
(US 1944 107m) DVD1/2
Exceeding the speed limit
p Joseph Sistrom d Billy Wilder w Raymond Chandler, Billy Wilder novel James M.Cain ph John F.Seitz ed Doane Harrison m Miklós Rózsa art Hans Dreier, Hal Pereira cos Edith Head
Barbara Stanwyck (Phyllis Dietrichson), Fred MacMurray (Walter Neff), Edward G.Robinson (Barton T.Keyes), Tom Powers (Dietrichson), Porter Hall (Jackson), Jean Heather (Lola Dietrichson), Gig Young (Nino Zachette), Fortunio Bonanova (Sam Gorlopis), John Philliber (Janitor),
In polls as to the greatest film noir in existence, many would single out Billy Wilder’s jet black adaptation of James M.Cain’s pulp novel. It’s so cynical it’s the sort of film that leaves a rather bitter taste in the mouth but a smirk on the face of any film buff. With the exception of Heather’s Lola there is probably no wholly decent character in the movie. Even Robinson’s loveable Keyes is a ruthless insurance worker who would rather see a fellow go to the gas chamber than pay out on a policy. Okay, perhaps a little harsh, but before we get carried away eulogising over the friendship between MacMurray and Robinson, let us be careful not to forget this is not just a noir but an indictment of the insurance business (a business that let us not forget saw the comic happenings in Wilder’s The Apartment sixteen years later, again with MacMurray as a heel), over half a century before John Grisham’s The Rainmaker made a similar Zola-like accusation.
Like many great noirs, it’s told in flashback (a man hobbles to his office in the Pacific All Risk Company and turns on his dictaphone, where he begins to relate a tale of how he became involved in a murder to commit an insurance fraud). Yet Indemnity was Wilder’s only foray into film noir and he was unquestionably helped by the script input of Raymond Chandler, who seemingly revelled in the chance to show his beloved L.A. without the phoney idealism of his Philip Marlowe. There is no hero here, MacMurray’s Walter Neff being the prototype example of the antihero. He may be a lot nicer than Stanwyck’s Phyllis, but he’s a still a heel, first class. There’s a real sexual tension in the air in the iconic first meeting between the two, punctuated by the odd quip (my personal favourite being “I thought all native Californians came from Iowa“). His first glimpse of her is on the landing wrapped only in a bath towel. He wanders about eyeing her up like a wolf on the prowl, but he’s the one being eyed up; Phyllis Dietrichson is one of cinema’s great black widows, rotten to the core and with all the warmth of deepest Siberia. For such unlovely characters to be as intoxicating as they are relies on a delicious script, controlled direction and a pair of iconic performances. Indemnity gives us all three and then some. Stanwyck one expects great things of and this is her greatest foray into the world of total bitchdom. Arguably even greater is MacMurray, revelatory as the heel who has some decency but not enough to deserve any less than the gas chamber he’s going to after the last fadeout (and which was shot by Wilder but later discarded). However, perhaps even topping both is Robinson’s Keyes, with his little man knotting up his stomach and his mantra of “to me a claims man is a surgeon.” He’s one of cinema’s great character supports and he takes his role and runs through centre with it. Kudos, too, to Miklós Rózsa, whose score is perfect for the cynical proceedings, following the characters like a funerary cortege waiting to pick them up on the way to the cemetery.
However, when push comes to shove and the signature hits the dotted line of the claim form, it’s Wilder who deserves the most praise. All his other films have at least some decency in them, but here Wilder takes decency and tosses it into the ashcan like a used cigarette butt. Indeed Indemnity is the sort of film when more is said by the lighting of a cigarette by another than by a million words. But only Wilder could have the final four words of this masterpiece in which romance is to be sneered at to be “I love you, too.” Indeed Neff and Keyes’ genuine regard for each other is the only glimmer of light in the whole movie. That final cigarette is its dying embers.
Great review Allan
This goes down as my favourite film noir and, when I finally get around to it, will feature rather highly in my best movie of the 40’s vote.
You’ve pretty much covered everything I love about this film; you’re right about it leaving a smirk on your face, I watch this film with a permanent Cheshire cat grin.
MacMurray is awesome in this film, it’s one of the performances you could watch over and over and, without fail, every different viewing becomes a revelation.
Allan, a direct and suitably acid assessment. As Charles Ingham wrote of the movie in 1971: “One of the highest summits of film noir… without a single trace of pity or love.”
But, just a couple of quibbles.
Firstly, you can’t expect to throw out a line like “the phoney idealism of [Chandler's] Philip Marlowe” and not expect a fight. I have read every Marlowe novel and there is nothing phoney about Chandler or Marlowe. Marlowe is not so much idealistic as decent.
Forgive me for the length of my response, but I would like to paraphrase some of my posts on Marlowe and Double Indemnity from FilmsNoir.Net.
In Farewell, My Lovely the novel, this is Marlowe one evening: “It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them… It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck. I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room… ‘I’m scared,’ I said suddenly. ‘I’m scared stiff… I’m afraid of death and despair,’ I said. ‘Of dark water and drowned men’s faces and skulls with empty eyesockets. I’m afraid of dying, of being nothing’… ”
From Little Sister, this is Marlowe after having to deal with a gray bureaucrat: “They were never young and will never be old. They have no beauty, no charm, no style. They don’t have to please anybody. They are safe. They are civil without ever being polite and intelligent and knowledgeable without any real interest in anything. They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.”
From The High Window (1942), Marlowe again: “The night was all around, soft and quiet. The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.”
Secondly, Wilder in Double Indemnity has a swipe at big business not just the insurance game.
The final draft of the screenplay of Double Indemnity (1944) by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler in the Motion Picture Academy Library in Los Angeles includes the cut final prison execution chamber scene and a line of dialog that was spoken by Walter Neff, just after he said “I love you.” to Barton Keyes. With sirens wailing in the background, Neff says: “At the end of that trolley line, just as I get off, you be there to say good bye. Will you, Keyes?” The story then shifts to the execution. This sequence was filmed but cut (by the studio?) from the production release.
James Naremore in his 1998 book on film noir, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, offers this penetrating analysis and critique:
“… the execution described in the longest version of the script greatly increases our sympathy for Walter, all the while raising questions about the criminality of the state. It also provides a tragic recognition scene for Keyes, who is shaken out of his moral complacency. This last point is especially important, because Keyes functions as a representative of the insurance company. Although he approaches his work with the intuitive flair of an artist and the intellectual intensity of a scientist, he remains a loyal agent of industrial rationality—a talented bureaucrat who, in effect, has helped to create the office building, the drive-in restaurant, the supermarket, and all the other landmarks of modern Los Angeles that the film relentlessly criticizes… One of the many virtues of Wilder’s original ending is that this complex, brilliantly acted character would have been made to confront his inner demon and to experience poetic justice. Keyes would have been brought face-to-face with the culminating instance of instrumental reason, the “end of the line” for industrial culture: the California gas chamber… For the original version of Double Indemnity, Paramount built an exact replica of the [San Quentin] gas chamber, depicting it as a modern, sanitized apparatus for administering official death sentences. At considerable expense, Wilder photographed the step-by-step procedure of execution, emphasizing its coldly mechanical efficiency. There was no blood, no agonized screaming, and, for once in the movie, almost no dialogue. Much of the sequence was shot from Walter’s point of view, looking through glass windows at the spectators outside the chamber—an angle creating a subtle parallel between the chamber and the “dark room” of a movie theater. When the fatal pellets dropped, clouds of gas obscured the windows, and we could barely make out Keyes standing amid the witnesses, turning his head away. Soon afterward, a doctor entered the chamber to pronounce Walter dead. According to the script, the original film ended as follows: … All the witnesses have now left except Keyes, who stares, shocked and tragic, beyond the door. The guard goes to him and touches his arm, indicating to him that he must leave. Keyes glances for the last time towards the gas chamber and slowly moves to go out. CORRIDOR OUTSIDE THE DEATH CHAMBER CAMERA SHOOTING IN THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR AT KEYES , who is just turning to leave. Keyes comes slowly out into the dark, narrow corridor. His hat is on his head now, his overcoat is pulled around him loosely. He walks like an old man. He takes eight or ten steps, then mechanically reaches a cigar out of his vest pocket and puts it in his mouth. His hands, in the now familiar gesture, begin to pat his pockets for matches. Suddenly he stops, with a look of horror on his face. He stands rigid, pressing hand against his heart. He takes the cigar out of his mouth and goes slowly on toward the door, CAMERA PANNING with him. When he has almost reached the door, the guard stationed there throws it wide, and a blaze of sunlight comes in from the open prison yard outside. Keyes slowly walks out into the sunshine, a forlorn and lonely man. Until someone rescues this scene from the Paramount vaults, we will never know if it is superior to the current version, and even then there may be room for debate. One thing, however, is clear: Keyes’s lonely walk out of the prison would have thrown a shadow over everything that preceded it. It was not until Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole that Wilder would produce such a savage critique of modernity. Although the released version of his famous thriller remains an iconoclastic satire that challenges the censors, it is a lighter entertainment than the original and a much easier product for Hollywood to market. (According to the Paramount press book, photographs of Barbara Stanwyck in her wig and tight sweater were circulated to American soldiers overseas, and Edward G. Robinson’s performance enabled the studio to obtain a tie-in from the Cigar Institute of America.) No matter how much we admire the film that was exhibited in 1944, the form of cinema that the French described as noir is probably better exemplified by another Double Indemnity, which we have yet to see.”
Tony, it’s just wore me out reading your response ten times more than writing the original piece. I know when I’m licked.
Ibetolis, good to see you here again.
Bravo Tony ten times over again! This is a brilliantly footnoted mammoth submission, which indeed takes the original parameters of Allan’s review to new levels of interpretation. The James Naremore critique is enlightening and should rightfully accompany any review or posting of this masterpiece. I also happen to agree with Tony’s objection on the suggested “phoniness” of Marlowe and Chandler, and am further enlighted by his fascinating clarification.
My quibble with Allan is insulting this film (one of the greatest of all American films) by placing it “#31″ of the 40’s. Completely absurd. This is probably the greatest noir film of all-time as well.
Wonderful and enthusiastic comment by Ibetolis.
Hi! Allan and Tony,
A great write-up!…by you, “Allan” and a great critique!… by “The Master of Film Noir” Tony of one of my favorite film(s) …(Director Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity)
…that is considered a noir. (With all the “noir elements”…presence…methink!)
This film noir “novice” (that would be me!)….is learning a very “valuable” lesson, from you film noir…How do you spell…a-f-i-c-i-o-n-a-d-o-s….
Tks, dcd
Tony said,”James Naremore in his 1998 book on film noir, “More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts….”
I guess, I have to purchase this book “real” soon!…just to keep up with the “Master of Film Noir” and his “quotes” from this book.
Hi! Sam Juliano,
You “jumped”(“posted”) in line a little bit ahead of me!…didn’t see you there!
dcd
The comment thread here seems to trump all. It’s great to see all the film noir enthusiasts all in one place!
Being 31 is no insult, Sam, rather a compliment that any film placed so highly in such a magical decade. I prefer 30 others, live with it.
YOU live with Allan! It’s not my list (thank goodness) it’s yours!
If anyone should take issue with Mr. Fish’s placement it should be me. I had the film as #1 on my list, as I feel it is an incomparable masterpiece, the pinnacle of film noir and as corrosive a film as has ever been made. It’s is perfection, so a placement at #31 is rather…..well…..I’ll say no more.
I also had “Double Indemnity” in my top 5 and am amazed that any real film lover or critic could make claim to preferring 30 other films from it’s decade. It’s unbelievable in fact.
Anyway, it’s a fine review of an American classic.
I agree with all of your fine gentlmen on the greatness of this film, and dispute it’s placement as low as this (regardless of the fact that Allan gives it ****) but I respect his right to his own list.
It’s 31 out of so many films in the 1940s. It made the top 50. Do I get insulted if someone leaves out what will be my no 1 or 2 film? No. I rate 30 films slightly higher, or rather prefer 30 films. you all have your own lists. Part of the reason I did a top 50, not 25, was because I felt bad about leaving many masterpieces out of the top 25, and wanted to do them justice, even if the bottom half didn’t count towards the poll, DI, there are some other extraordinary films from 26-30.
Let’s not turn the site into a fascist forum where everyone must have certain films at such a place or higher otherwise it makes a mockery of the poll in the first place.
And Sam, thanks for the final words. I am not placing it 31 or Grapes 33 to be deliberately difficult. I would have got no response at all if I had left both out of my list entirely. But because I didn’t forget them, just had them slightly lower down, I am attacked. I could retort that others have them so high as they don’t appreciate the films I have above enough, or rather haven’t seen them. But I don’t, allow me the same courtesy. You don’t know yet what is above it.
Allan, so why hold off on publishing your list – at least your placements would be seen in context, and the debate would be more grounded?
Tony, I am trying to get Allan to relent an dpublish the list beforehand. He is obsessed over the ‘drama’ of releasing it piecemeal, but your cogent points do overide this admittedly ‘cosmetic’ concern.
I remain appalled and aghast at his not having THE GRAPES OF WRATH near the top and DOUBLE INDEMNITY not close after, but as we are breaking bread together so-to-speak here in New Jersey until January 1st, I will try and be a good boy. LOL! For the record I have seen just about every film that Allan has OVER TGOW.
Tony, my list will be finished long before the cut off point in February, there can be discussion later. I just think it’s better to hold off publishing my list until later. sam has his up, that’s enough.
I’m embarrassingly behind things at WitD, playing catch-up…
Allan’s review here is impressively stellar, and brings up new issues with a film that has been so thoroughly covered through the years by film lovers. Tony’s comment is breathtaking in its implications about Marlowe and most especially Double Indemnity (and its excised ending). A marvelous discussion follows!
I cannot know which films will be in Allan’s Top Ten for the 1940s, however, I suspect another landmark film noir will be. Which most likely means that it is his favorite noir of all time; quite the statement concerning his great, controversial taste, and one with which I enthusiastically agree.
However, with some monumentally great films already analyzed in this great adventure, these next thirty films better knock all of our socks off!
Patience, patience, Alexander…:-) All will be revealed.
never mind “patience.” Alexander has toasted you to high heaven here. Throw the esteemed and gracious young man and film scholar a bone!
Hahaha.
You’re just desperate to see what’s coming, Mr Impatient, and can’t stand to wait, you big overgrown kid. Alexander knows I’m appreciative of his comments.
Well, I will do all I can to forgive you for the relatively low placement of both “Double Indemnity” and “Great Expectations” which I still can’t get over, but with “The Grapes of Wrath” I may have to enact some punitive action against you while you are here in the states.
……….let’s tar and feather em!…….