A Film Noir Masterpiece. In 1938 Walter Neff, an experienced
salesman of the company Pacific All Risk Insurance, meets Phyllis Dietrichson,
the seductive wife of one of his clients, with whom he begins a romance.
Phyllis proposes to murder her husband to collect the life insurance policy and
Walter devises a plan to receive double the amount based on a double indemnity
clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead in the train tracks, the police take
it as an accidental death. However, Barton Keyes, an insurance analyst and Walter's
best friend, suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of
another man.
As long as there are women on earth there will be men who
will go crazy for them, this is precisely what makes this masterful film by
Billy Wilder, one of his best works and without a doubt the first masterpiece
of his filmography; timeless, immortal.
After the credit titles superimposed on a plane in which the
silhouette of a man walks supported on crutches accompanied the music of Miklós
Rózsa, a car recklessly runs at high speed. Finally the car stops in front of
an office building and a man walking with difficulty comes down. Once inside
the building and after a trivial conversation with the elevator operator, our
man enters an office, turns on a lamp and lights a cigarette in this order,
approaches a dictaphone and begins to dictate what is soon revealed as a
confession of murder. The man in question is Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), an
insurance agent who confesses to his boss Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)
that he is the author of the murder of Mr. Dietrichson, a client of the agency
whose recent death was supposed to be a real problem in the sense of having to
pay a hundred thousand dollars as a result of the conditions of the policy,
Neff clarifies "I killed him for money and for a woman, and neither I nor
the woman got the money ".
We are in Los Angeles on July 16, 1938 and in the sixth
minute of the film; Billy Wilder has just made the wildest spoiler in the
history of cinema. He has a hundred minutes ahead, but he just told us the end,
not only has he let us know who the killer is but also what his motivations
were and the ill-fated end of them.
How is it possible that during the next hundred minutes,
Wilder not only manages to give birth to an authentic masterpiece of cinema,
but also maintains a constant intrigue and tension level despite having
revealed the end?
It is all about the wonderful script. A script full of
wonderful dialogues, and masterfully written by Wilder himself and the great screenwriter
Raymond Chandler who adapted a novel by James M. Cain entitled "Three of a
kind". However cinema is not just about the script, but in this case
Wilder’s directing expertise, which is evident throughout the entire film. The
presentation of the female character, Phillys Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) at
the top of a staircase, implicitly naked and only covered with a towel is
loaded with more eroticism than all the footage of other films allegedly
transgressive.
After the beginning of the confession, a first flashback
transports us to two months before while Walter Neff's voice-over continues to
introduce us into the story. This voice over that will appear several times
throughout the film is used wisely by Wilder who uses it to streamline the
story through tuned ellipses and introduce some characters without overloading
the footage.
Wilder handles the narrative with a master hand, managing to
maintain the tension in three aspects, on the one hand the sexual tension
between MacMurray and Stanwyck, secondly the tension of the plot with several
accessory plots (that were revealed as fundamental in the outcome) as the
courtship from Phyllis's step-daughter, Lola (Jean Heather) with some guy with
an Italian name, and thirdly, the moral tension that provokes in the spectator
the stance of a hero-villain, a murderer whose downfall we can only feel pity.
Fred MacMurray, undoubtedly before the role of his life,
offers the best interpretation of his career. Barbara Stanwyck is dazzling and
her interpretation laid the foundations of what would later be the prototype of
the “femme fatale” in film noir, her creation of Phyllis, full of sensuality
and perfidy in equal parts, gave her the third of her four Oscar nominations,
although like on the other three occasions, she did not receive the Oscar and the award
went that year to Ingrid Bergman for “Gaslight”.
Edward G. Robinson completes the protagonist triangle with
an unforgettable character on which the film is articulated by addressing to
him the initial Walter Neff’s confession and being the reference on which the
script returns whenever it needs to rely on a character that gives meaning to
the plot. His sixth sense to detect fraud comes to life in that unforgettable
inner voice that compresses his stomach and does not let him eat every time he
smells trouble.
Double Indemnity
(double compensation) refers to a clause that Walter introduces in the
insurance for which the insured amount becomes double if the accident occurs in
train. The double compensation refers to an element of the plot, but is the
downfall of the story itself.
Double Indemnity got 7 Oscar nominations in 1944 but did not
win any awards, the nominations included the categories of best film, best
director, best actress for Barbara Stanwyck, best adapted script, best picture,
best sound and another for the wonderful soundtrack by Miklós Rózsa.
Cast:
Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff
Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson
Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes
Porter Hall as Mr. Jackson
Jean Heather as Lola Dietrichson
Tom Powers as Mr. Dietrichson
Byron Barr as Nino Zachetti
Richard Gaines as Mr. Norton
