I had only been a few months
since the last time I saw Double
Indemnity but today’s watch of the noir inflected The Lost Weekend made me want to step back a year earlier to
revisit Billy Wilder at the height of the genre. Double Indemnity could be described as the archetypical film noir.
Although the genre stretches back further than the film’s 1944 release, it was Double Indemnity which provided the blue
prints from which later titles took their queues. Famous today for its voice-over, use of venetian blind lighting and provocative femme fatale, at the
17th Academy Awards the picture was nominated for seven Oscars.
Although it ultimately left that ceremony empty handed, the movie’s reputation
has gone from strength to strength and it currently sits inside the top thirty
on the AFI’s poll of 20th Century movies.
The film is told in flashback and
voiceover by Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray). Neff is a talented insurance
salesman who becomes an active participant in a murder plot following a chance
meeting with the seductive Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Neff is at
the Dietrichson household with the hope of persuading Mr. Dietrichson to renew
his motor insurance when he’s presented with the beguiling temptress that is
the lady of the house. Blinded by love or at the very least passion, Neff
agrees to help the lady to murder her husband and share in the insurance pay
out. Having constructed an elaborate murder plot, Neff’s firm and in particular
the capable Barton Keys (Edward G. Robinson) are charged with working out how
the supposed accidental death of Mr. Dietrichson occurred.
