SPOILERS
Insurance Salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), by chance goes to see one of clients about motor insurance but instead meets his intriguing and beautiful wife Phyllis. She plays the bored but concerned housewife trying to trick Walter into letting her sign accident insurance for her husband. Walter sees right through her plan and guesses murder. But already under her spell, infatuated the two begin an affair. Walter eventually comes round to the idea of murder and the two plan the would be perfect plot. When Phyllis' husband 'accidentally' falls from a slow-moving train and breaks his neck, at first no one is none the wiser until Walter's colleague, an investigator of claims, smells foul play. Soon the deadly couple's plan and feelings unravel.
Although the film has very stereotypical elements of Film Noir, there are things that are slightly skewed. The lead male is not a detective or a useless drifter, he's an insurance salesman. The 'detective' role is Keyes, Walter's colleague who can sniff out any false insurance claim by listening to what he calls 'the little man' inside him. But although he knows something is wrong the $100,000 claim after thinking it over, he doesn't suspect for one moment his friend and colleague is involved. Unlike other Film Noir genre films, the story had a central friendship, Keyes and Neff. Unlike the be all and end all relationship of a man and a woman having an affair. The two friends, have some great exchanges and also alters the dynamics of the film. The little things make all the difference, such as the ongoing exchange where Neff always lights Keyes' cigars for him. These are welcomed. Especially as insurance is not the most exciting of settings.
It's not surprise that the film has some similarities to The Postman Always Rings Twice as the original novella was written by James M. Cain. As the film was made at the time of the damned Hayes Code, the original ending, double suicide, was cut. The ending that Billy Wilder planned involved Neff going to the gas chamber with Keyes watching but instead the film ended with the two men on the ground, Neff dying and Keyes lighting his cigarette for him, a gesture of friendship.
Of course, the story is really all about the femme fatale in this story, Barbara Stanwyck, she plays ice cold Phyllis who plays three women technically. The unwanted housewife, the lover and the sinister killer. She has the ability to be emotional and pretend to show love but in one quick stare, morph into a cold-hearted killer.
One of the most haunting images is in the opening credits. A lone man, on crutches, coupled with eery ominous music of impending violence sets the tone of the film, foreshadowing events to come. Double Indemnity is always listed as one of the greatest of its genre and it does indeed hold up against its contemporaries but there is something slightly lacking that even Stanwyck’s style just can’t quite measure up.
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This was first posted as part of the Blind Spot Series 2015.