1944 Directed by Billy Wilder
A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.
Fred MacMurray Barbara Stanwyck Edward G. Robinson Porter Hall Richard Gaines Jean Heather Tom Powers Fortunio Bonanova Byron Barr John Berry Raymond Chandler Edmund Cobb Kernan Cripps Bess Flowers Eddie Hall Teala Loring Sam McDaniel Billy Mitchell Clarence Muse Douglas Spencer John Philliber Harold Garrison James Adamson Betty Farrington Miriam Franklin George Magrill Constance Purdy Dick Rush Floyd Shackelford Show All…
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…
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…
Noir-November Challenge! Movie #3
I'm beginning to fall for Noir! Absolute perfection! Barring the scene where the savvy streetwise Neff is upset and wants to chill! Taking into consideration the gritty adult nature of the film you'd expect to see him smoking like a chimney and drowning his sorrows at a bar right.. No! they go totally out of character by sending our Neff to a bowling alley! lol I about died when he said 'And Rolled a Few Lines" Thankfully that was the ONLY cheesy misstep in the film! Perhaps that was code for snorting a few lines!
I can't believe this is the same Fred MacMurray from My Three Sons! The powerful performances given by Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson were absolutely incredible!
Stanwyck was one cold blooded heartless biatch! She put the Femme in Femme Fatale!
If all Noir was like this I would have been a fan ages ago!
Establishing the genre of film-noir in cinema, catapulting Billy Wilder into the big leagues of Hollywood filmmakers & expertly sustaining its foreboding ambience throughout its runtime, Double Indemnity is one of the brightest works of Wilder's career which, in spite of revealing its finale to the viewers in its opening moments, succeeds in carving out its own moments of suspense.
Based on James M. Cain's 1943 novella of the same name, Double Indemnity tells the story of an experienced insurance salesman who starts an affair with the seductive wife of one of his clients & devises a scheme to murder his client in a manner that invokes the double indemnity clause of his insurance plan. Trouble begins when his boss begins to…
If you like your dialogue to snap, mixed with a little bit of misogyny and some good old fashioned cynicism, then Billy Wilder is your man. With a firecracker of a script adapted from a novel of the same name, Double Indemnity burns off the screen as a trio of single minded characters all race to outwit each other.
Film noir doesn't come any slicker than hearing Walter Neff's recollection on the blonde dame that plagues his mind after he first claps eyes on her. Neff is a man that has it all figured before he walks into the Dietrichson residence looking to wrap up a simple sales renewal. He dresses slick and talks fast with an answer for everything,…
Mugwumps 2018/08 Film Challenge 3/15:
A noir or neo-noir film.
Classic noir. Clever and smokey and with characters that aren't quite as well-rounded as one might hope, but still engaging from start to finish.
Excellent, entrancing, exemplary. Tight hour 45 that flew right by. Nothing surprising if you are familiar with the genre, but not unexpected as is a trope-setter. Watch this film!
A noir classic. Great performances by MacMurray, Stanwyck and Robinson. Tense, gripping and fast-paced witty dialogue. It’s certainly dated in some respects, but it’s fun to watch this time capsule of intrigue and to follow the cat-and-mouse games within.
Uma narrativa que se inicia de forma intrigante e se mantém inteligente e tensa até o momento em que Billy Wilder decide colocar um ponto final, libertando o espectador da suspensão entre as incertezas e reviravoltas que nunca deixam a peteca cair.
Prior to the screening, BU actuarial scientists Lois K. Horwitz and Hal Tepfer talked about the math and science actuaries use in forecasting theory to evaluate the likelihood of unfortunate events occurring.
Double Indemnity is one of my all time favorite film noirs, yet I haven't watched it since college. In one of my film classes, we had to do a scene-by-scene descriptions of Double Indemnity, so I always think of watching Double Indemnity as work. Even now when I watch it, I overanalyze Double Indemnity's every frame, trying to figure out what Billy Wilder is trying to say with the angle of the camera, or his usage of shadows. I think I'll always associate Double Indemnity with work, and I think that's why I haven't watched it in so long.
But I love what Double Indemnity is doing as a crime film, first showing the "perfect crime," then finding the holes…
Y’know, I was going to write a really long, multi-paragraph love letter to Billy Wilder and classic Hollywood as a review, but I really don’t have the focus to do that. All I want to say is that I absolutely adore Wilder, I think he is the best classic Hollywood director, and that I will forever draw inspiration from these classic films.
The greatest film noir with all of the elements there and with crackling dialogue and a cast that dives right in. Wilder brilliantly orchestrates the whole thing with skill as the sordid tale unfolds in a delightfully twisty way. So much fun.
In which garbage people do garbage things for garbage reasons and pretty much everyone loses.
Best movie about insurance I've ever seen.
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