Double Indemnity
d. Billy Wilder, 1944
Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is the definitive film noir, period. Sure, Fritz Lang laid the foundation with M (1931) and its shadowy compositions and high angles, and Orson Welles provided what is considered the last of the classical noirs with Touch of Evil (1958), but it's this Wilder masterpiece that stands above all others. First, Wilder used black-and-white photography as expressively as anyone else before him or since (Lang and Welles included), and John Seitz's impeccable cinematography in Double Indemnity is the perfect example of this. Second, Wilder's direction is as seductive as anything's that ever been filmed, but above all it's his writing that (justifiably) gets a lot of credit. In Double Indemnity, he collaborated with novelist Raymond Chandler - whose novels inspired Hawks' The Big Sleep and Altman's The Long Goodbye - on the screenplay, and I challenge anyone to find more perfect dialogue than is on showcase here. Lines like "How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?" and "I killed him for the money and for the woman. I didn't get the money... and I didn't get the woman." summarize the mood of Double Indemnity, and most of Wilder's work for that matter. And I haven't even talked about the story yet, as if it really mattered. Well, it's about insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) plotting to rub off Phyllis' husband for his insurance money. As the viewer gathers in the first scene, everything went wrong, and the film recounts the fascinating relationship between Walter and Barbara. MacMurray and Stanwyck are at their finest here, and they make up one of the most captivating couples in film. Right up there with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard's Breathless. And that's saying a lot.
