Part of Noir-November

“I wonder if I know what you mean.” “I wonder if you wonder.”

The insurance business is an inherently slimy game. Doesn’t matter the type: life, health, automobile, disability. It’s all dirty. It can’t help but be. Everyone needs the product—everyone faces risks against which they must hedge—but the insurer only makes a buck by not paying out claims. All well and good if no claims come in, but people inevitably die or get sick, wreck their cars or have accidents. Claims are inevitably made. The insurer’s job ends up being not to provide the service it has just sold. It’s a bait and switch—a promise of assistance followed by a laundry list of reasons why that…

Just last week, I watched Notorious for the first time. It was just about perfect, really, except for one thing: in his darker films, Hitchcock tends to make his protagonists unsympathetic and his leading ladies unconvincingly good. Because of that, there seems something missing in his noirish films, in Notorious and Rear Window and a few others, that makes me dislike them just a little more than I should.

Well, Double Indemnity does just the opposite, and how I love it. It's sort of like Psycho, in that the leading man is oddly sympathetic and the leading lady always suspect. But there's a core of sadness in the lead pair in Double Indemnity, instead of the shiftiness that characterizes both…

A seminal piece of American film noir, Billy Wilder’s classic thriller Double Indemnity withstands the test of time with monumental work from its actors and a superb script to boast. The great Barbara Stanwyck stars as a mysterious woman who lures a good-natured insurance salesman (played by Fred MacMurray) into killing her own husband. The accomplishment of the film does not only lie with Wilder’s arresting composition and execution of scenes but also with its witty screenplay (written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler) which I found the film’s best highlight. Just consider the banter between Stanwyck and MacMurray at the beginning of the film proved to be a screenplay masterclass, uncovering both character’s motivations, and disillusions without being explicit about…

If there ever were a fitting cinematic companion piece to Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" would make a worthy candidate. Stark and spare, a tangible note a foreboding guilt hangs over Wilder's dark drama as it characters' schemes tangle and threaten to fall apart. Crackling with unwavering tension and conniving ambition, the classic noir is every bit as good as its reputation suggests; and that reputation suggests an excellent, pioneering, and fully engrossing work of film.

"Double Indemnity" is all about the art of the scheme. When an insurance man gets caught up in a plot to kill a man for his insurance policy, no one involved will ever be the same. Hushed-tone voice-overs, femme fatales, and…

The look, sound, and feel of classic film noir ... and it's clear to see why Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is among the best in this genre of the past.

"I was walking down the street to the drugstore, suddenly, it came over me that everything would go wrong. It sounds crazy Keyes, but it's true, so help me, I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man."

(Quip of the Review: We all know those in the insurance game can be crooks, but in this story we see they can be hard-boiled detectives too when it comes to having to pay out double for a claim.)

When you think about what makes a good…