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…
Κολασμένη Αγάπη, Pacto de sangre, Verzekering op de dood, Dvostruka obmana, Shinya no kokuhaku, 이중 배상, Bloedgeld, 双重保险, 双重生活, 双倍赔偿, Assurance sur la mort
every film noir: this femme fatale has seduced and murdered 17 people
me: and i hope she seduces and murders me next!
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…
stunning, anti-capitalist noir on how closely-related economic prosperity and primal savagery can be. loved the playful tone billy wilder manages to strike with such grim, cynical ideas, and the inevitability that he has linger over every frame. there's this very addictive quality to the theatricality of wilder's dialogue too that practically doubles as a love letter to... words, i guess, but it totally fits for a film about façades and salesmen. the true sale was... murder... or love... or both. doesn't matter. barbara stanwyck is a goddess.
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…
All you need to make a movie is a girl, a gun, and a life insurance policy.
I love this movie beyond measure. I love its chokingly lyrical (and so very Raymond Chandler), inch perfect screenplay. I love its dark humor, and the absurdity of glamorous Phyllis and anxious Walter skulking around a grocery store so aggressively sterile it seems to come from inside the monolith in 2001. I love the long takes, and the way the austerity of Billy Wilder's shooting style contrasts so perfectly with the labyrinthine language and tale it's recording. But, most of all, I love Walter Neff and Barton Keyes.
I love that, less than 30 minutes into the film, the last decade of Walter's life is already laid out before our eyes. We see him as a 24-year-old, new insurance man,…
