Double Indemnity (1944)

 Director: Billy Wilder

 Producer: Joseph Sistrom

 Writers: Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder (from a novella by James M. Cain)

 Actors: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G, Robinson

 Cinematography: John F. Seitz

 Music: Miklos Rozsa

 Rated: N/A

 Running time: 106 mins.

Classic L.A. Noir

         A car races through the dark, hazy streets of downtown Los Angeles. It stops in front of an office building on Olive Street, a man gets out, staggers into the lobby, gets into an elevator, gets out, enters an office, sits down at a dictaphone, and begins to record a sordid story about lust, adultery, greed, and murder--- as blood slowly seeps through his shirt. So begins Double Indemnity.

           The plot goes something like this: in 1938 L.A. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), an insurance salesman, becomes infatuated with Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the wife of an oil company executive, and the two of them plot and eventually carry out the murder of her husband in order to cash in on the double indemnity clause of his insurance policy--- a policy he’s not even aware he has. The two lovers almost get away with it, but Neff’s associate, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), the insurance claims manager, suspects murder as the cause of death, but is unaware of Neff’s part in it.. He soon unknowingly tips Neff off to the fact that Mrs. Dietrichson has been two-timing him and just used him as a means to get rid of her unwanted husband.

            Walter and Phyllis confront each other at her house, she shoots and wounds him, he shoots and kills her. The movie ends with Neff lying in the doorway of his office building incapacitated by his bullet wound awaiting the police with Keyes, his friend and mentor, standing over him and lamenting his disappointment in Neff’s end.

             This Billy Wilder movie from 1944 has all the earmarks of the classic noir film. It proved to be the standard for all the dark crime movies that came after in the period known as classic noir: the late 40s and 50s. The screenplay is based on a James M. Cain novella from 1935, and was written (not without conflict) by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder. In 1992 the film was deemed worthy of preservation by the National Film Registry, and in 2007 was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best American films of the twentieth century.

          Double Indemnity opened doors as to what could be depicted on an American movie screen. Murder for sex and money was, of course, nothing new in 1944, the tabloids had been thriving on it for years; but it was new to see it so glaringly portrayed on the screen. This movie pushed the envelope when it came to just what the Taft Office (film censors) would allow. Wilder took it as far as he could--- and got most of what he wanted. The original ending with Neff in the San Quentin gas chamber as Keyes looks on was, however, considered too gruesome and was cut. 

             This movie, to my knowledge, was the first film noir to feature Los Angeles as a prominent background for the narrative. There would in years to come be many more. L.A. would become, and has remained, the premier noir city. Wilder used L.A. extensively for exterior shots: the Dietrichson’s Spanish colonial house in Los Feliz (which still looks as it did then), Jerry’s Market on Melrose Avenue (now gone), the Hollywood Bowl, Olvera Street, Glendale Station, and the intersection of Hollywood and Western serve as backdrops to key scenes. The viewer gets an interesting glance at life in mid-40s L.A. Angelenos, then as now, attended concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, dined in Mexican restaurants on Olvera Street, went to lectures at UCLA, but quite amazingly--- could buy a beer in a drive-in restaurant and drink it in their car!              

            The dialogues, especially those between Walter and Phyllis, emphasize the fact that this story is taking place in So. California and would not be the same if it occurred anywhere else. For writers like Chandler and Cain, and filmmakers like Wilder L.A. symbolized the American dream gone sour. It was not only a place where people came to get away from restraint and seek their fortunes, but also where lust and murder lurked beneath the stately palm trees and above the neatly mowed lawns--- a place where a mundane thing like an insurance policy could be deadly.

             Double Indemnity  came at a critical moment both for the country and the city. In 1944 the United States was entering the last and bloodiest year of World War II. The war was changing America--- and America’s perception of itself. Film noir highlights this change in perception. Los Angeles at that time was a city full of servicemen on leave, drifters, war workers, and opportunists who came to get what they could, while they could. Tensions were at the breaking point. This was a year after the Zoot Suit riots, and the Sleepy Lagoon murder case; and that very autumn two unspeakably gruesome murders took place at the Barclay and Joyce Hotels downtown. L.A. was a city on the edge. All this is subtly presented as subtext in this classic tale of middle-class corruption, greed and deceit in the City of the Angels.