Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Double Indemnity (spoilers)

In this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot for The Film Experience, Double Indemnity, a silhouette of a man on crutches walks slowly towards the camera, shrouded in mystery, during the opening credits (the title of which is an insurance clause that provides an extra payout for less common deaths).  After salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) glances over the life he has built for himself and destroyed in one fell strangle, he records a confession.  In flashbacks, we see him trying to sell an auto insurance renewal to the seductive, yet steely housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), only to have her later sell the resistant, but soft Walter on committing insurance fraud and murder; she naturally closes the deal with her sexual wiles.  The film's plot mechanics are airtight for a thriller, but from the perspective of 21^st-century technology with bullet trains, forensics, etc, the execution of her husband seems silly and absurd.  But, you can’t forget that it was a simpler time with no car alarms, cell phones, and DNA evidence.  People could hide behind doors and car seats unnoticed in the shadows of black and white film noir.  And, of course, there was the kissing between lines like “I’m crazy about you, baby” to substitute for carnal endeavors to pass the censor board. 

Yet, as a testament to director Billy Wilder, there’s still a suspense in watching Walter impersonating another person, while concealing his identity on a train, as well as when the Dietrichson car won’t start during the homicidal couple’s escape from the dead body.  And, despite the quaint, unintended (?) humor of the lead couple’s clandestine meetings in the local supermarket, the script crackles with dialogue at every corner aisle, which is an understatement, really.  The one-liners are aplenty, one of my favorites being when claims manager Barton Keyes (the brilliant Edward G. Robinson, who had never been nominated for a competitive Oscar) finds out a visiting witness wants to extend his trip for a day, he warns him, “just don't put her on the expense account.”  And the hardboiled repartee is top shelf (Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff, forty-five miles an hour; Walter: How fast was I going, officer?; Phyllis: I’d say around ninety).

While MacMurray often played against his good guy type, I’m sure many of my generation remember him best from reruns of the domestic TV comedy My Three Sons where he was quite convincing as the patriarch amidst situational hijinks. We as an audience have to believe that Phyllis would turn Walter and convince him to throw everything away for her.  The chemistry between them must be off the chain, and it is, which is also the prime ingredient necessary to invest in a film where we know who did it, but we just don’t know how they ended up.  As the duplicitous Phyllis, however, Stanwyck must present sweet and innocent convincingly as a cover for her darker, nefarious nature: a nurse in the daytime, a black widow at night.  And, there is one beautifully lit moment where she subtlety betrays the guise concealing her true visage.  As Walter murders her husband out of the frame, the camera is trained on a brief, but impressionable close-up of Stanwyck.  She is neither conflicted, nor saddened, only initially absorbing the exhilaration of the act.  The man being killed, though disagreeable, wasn’t a physical abuser, as she suggested, and throws into question any other lies she may have told about him.  What we see may not be Helen of Troy’s face that launched a thousand ships, but it is the satiated bloodlust of a woman who just propelled an average guy to stoop to MURDER (and insurance fraud)!  The satisfaction that permeates from her face is stifled, but palpable.  All ye men beware of the charms of the ultimate femme fatale!

My Favorite Shot From Double Indemnity:

What would you look like while your spouse was dying?

An evil woman “a little more rotten” to the core (than her male counterpart) succeeds in manipulating a man who thinks with his genitals to break moral and legal codes, and continues to ply him with “I love you’s” until she begins to implement phase two of her own agenda without him.  He’s more corruptible than meets the eye, however.  After she sinks her claws in him, his personal greed grows, and he even passes up a promotion at work to ease his lifestyle when he still has time to make his exit.  But, it's the woman's fault for clouding his judgment!  In the end, he gets his just desserts, but not before engaging in the semi-redemptive act of selflessly uniting two young lovers, and keeping them from getting tangled up in his mess.  Those are the underlying themes from a film made during a time much different from the color and digital era we now find ourselves in today.  On one hand, I'll take the social progress.  On the other, I'll take the film noir!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot Meets Oscar Revisionism

After over two years and sixty-six posts going backwards year-by-year trying to imagine what the other five nominees in the Best Picture race would have been had the competition always been a field of “ten-ish” in our Oscar Revisionism series, we concluded the final chapter yesterday.  In a stroke of serendipity, The Film Experience’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot series this week coincided with Cinesnatch’s final edition of Oscar Revisionism.  Double Indemnity was one of the first five films to be nominated for Best Picture for the sixty-five year run where there were only five nominees (a series of years preceding 1944, there were ten, just as there were in 2009 and 2010), 1944 being the inaugural year.  It beat out such films as Laura, Lifeboat, and None But the Lonely Heart for a producer’s nomination.  It also got nods for Stanwyck, non-musical score, sound recording, black and white cinematography, and two for director and screenwriter Billy Wilder, who shared the latter with novelist Raymond Chandler. Now, that the series is complete, feel free to check out the full chart here.  

Previous HMWYBS:
Double Indemnity
A Star Is Born (1954)
Pink Narcissus
Road to Perdition
Picnic
The Story of Adele H.

Possessed

Edward Scissorhands

The Exorcist

Pariah
Raise the Red Lantern

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The Circus