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 George Magrill Constance Purdy Dick Rush Floyd Shackelford Oscar Smith Show All…
Pacto de sangre, Verzekering op de dood, Κολασμένη Αγάπη, Dvostruka obmana, Shinya no kokuhaku, 이중 배상, Bloedgeld
love is so fucked up it’s a good thing it’s a fake emotion created by mark zuckerberg to promote the heart react button
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…
One of the great examples in the cinema that does not matter much the details, but rather the conduction of the narrative. Crime, corrupted values, darkness, death and femme fatale find Wilder and comes to perfection. A definite noir.
when that guy started naming all those ways to kill yourself... ngl he had my full undivided attention
Keyes: personally vouches for you
Walter: digs his fingers into your shoulders constantly
keyes is the real winner, period.
i enjoyed this a lot more than i was expecting to. great at creating suspense visually (when viewed in the context of it being a book adaptation). That door scene was TENSE. Also this is one of the few noir films I've ever seen, and the only one from classical hollywood with a femme fatale. I love how fast-paced and necessary every line of dialogue felt, the script was pretty airtight for the most part, and I liked how it felt like every action was necessary. It did feel pretty long at bits and I wish that everything came a bit more full-circle. Also fuck the Hayes code, but it did inspire some good ass indirect dialogue (the flirting upon initial meeting to insinuate an affair was FANTASTIC). Also did this film inspire the outfit of the woman from Chungking Express?
Watched in Literature into Film class.
Kind of a crazy story with a crazy twist to it says Walter I have to say I concur with his statement. Pretty spot on noir if you ask me. Fred says baby probably too many times. Wilder stuffed the script so full of 40s zingers it might be too much but like why does it matter, baby.
All up to the midpoint, I thought something was going to go wrong. I thought their plan was going to get foiled. That car not * is one of the biggest oh s*** moments. It coiled me up and I popped a few times in the downhill slope when things get ugly.
So for decades, audiences were fantasizing having affairs and killing their significant others.
i'm so here for women murdering their husbands as part of elaborate insurance schemes
One of the great noir films of the 1940s. The dialog is amazing, the cast is outstanding, and Wilder's screenplay and direction strikes just the right balance between heavy and light. It is a cliché, but they don't make them like this anymore. They tried in the 80s and 90s with explicit sex and violence, but none of them were as good as this. Today the focus would probably be Robinson's character, and the story would get bogged down in discussions of fibers, fluids, and forensics.
Watched and reviewed 2013
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