Plot intro
Smooth-talking insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) goes to the home of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) to sell insurance to her unpleasant husband (Tom Powers). Walter is immediately smitten with Phyllis, who is intelligent, beautiful and trapped in a loveless marriage. They grow closer and begin to have an affair. Then they do what all cheaters do - plan to take out a massive life insurance policy on Phyllis’ husband and murder him. But Walter doesn’t bank on the investigations of his tenacious boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), or the secret machinations of Phyllis herself…
In the year of Double Indemnity’s release, Barbara Stanwyck was the highest-paid actress in the US. The American Film Institute’s list of Greatest Actresses places her at number 11, and also lists her character, Phyllis Dietrichson, as the eighth greatest villain in cinema. Meanwhile Double Indemnity itself is listed as the AFI’s 29th greatest movie and it is considered one of the earliest and most quintessential examples of the film noir genre. So even if you’ve never heard of her, it’s evident that Stanwyck in Double Indemnity is a seminal point in movie history.
Explaining the plot of Double Indemnity can almost undersell it. Even the title, a legal term involving insurance payouts to spouses after a death, is dull as dishwater. How many people do you think would want to watch a thriller about….insurance? Surely film noirs usually involve private investigators, gangsters, sexy vixens with hidden secrets and microfilms tucked away inside avian statuettes? Indeed, Double Indemnity features not a shred of the mafia, law enforcement or a hitman. Walter and Phyllis’ insidious plot is only unravelled by Walter’s boss Barton because the insurance company is stingy and doesn’t want to pay the double indemnity that Phyllis is after. Barton isn’t on a one-man crusade to unveil a murder, he just can’t afford the insurance pay out.
So why is Double Indemnity so exciting? Well, quite frankly, I think that’s down to Barbara Stanwyck herself. The film begins portraying her as the downtrodden, trapped victim of a loveless marriage. When she and Walter start to discuss the prospect of murder, the writing very much emphasises that this is coming from a place of desperation. Stanwyck is delicate, hesitant, and vulnerable. So it comes as a real shocker both character-wise and performance-wise that Phyllis turns out to be the villain of the piece- this crime ain’t her first rodeo. When her chequered and dubious past comes to light, she subtly changes into the conniving femme fatale synonymous with Film Noir. The change is striking but gradual. As an audience, you transition from supporting her to being frightened of her, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this transition occurs in the story-telling- and that takes real acting skill (and a brilliant script).
It is this manipulation of the characters and the audience’s feelings about them that makes Double Indemnity so entertaining. It doesn’t need glamorous escapism and impossible characters to tell its story- this is a tale of insurance fraud and murder that builds in intensity and could, genuinely, happen. The eventual unravelling of the murder plot thanks to various breadcrumbs dropped by the writers earlier in the film displays tight and thrilling story-telling.
I will say, however, that occasionally its age shows. Walter and Phyllis meet, fall in love and decide to murder Phyllis’ husband within the first 20 minutes of the film which seems like a very drastic conclusion to come to. Also, dialogue in Film Noir is hilariously over-written, especially the voiceover narration. At one point the main character is pontificating on the prospect of murder being like the smell of buttercups. I’m not sure what drug the writers were on at this point but I want some.
If you’re not familiar with Stanwyck’s work, this is arguably her best known and a great example of her skills (it was her third of four Best Actress Oscar nominations). I also recommend the slightly more melodramatic but no less entertaining Sorry, Wrong Number.
Interestingly, she was also a dedicated Republican, who supported the MPA, an organisation designed to seek out and blacklist Hollywood actors with Communist sympathies. It’s hard to judge her for this based on modern values, but the MPA has also been alleged to have antisemitic, isolationist and pro-Jim Crow sympathies. Plus it was supported by actors such as John Wayne who had some insanely Trumpian views on racial integration, so make of that what you will.
I didn’t manage to talk about him much, but Edward G Robinson’s performance as Barton Keyes rivalled Stanwyck’s in my opinion.
The script made us laugh at times when I don’t think it was meant to. Not a good sign.
Barbara Stanwyck isn’t a name well-known to me and (I imagine) many others. She’s one of the parade of Golden Age actors who won acclaim at the time, but with the passing of years, that vital Oscar win seems to be the only way actors get real lasting glory - their names still mentioned in lists of previous winners. That Oscar win eluded her, despite multiple nominations.
This is considered one of the earliest (some argue the first) example of film noir, a genre where it feels like Tennessee Williams writes the lush, heavy narration and Alfred Hitchcock is in charge of lighting and sound. Director Billy Wilder gives the sense of inventing the genre on the hoof - there’s a feeling of innovation and experimentation here that is thrilling. It’s worth noting this was one of the first in a directing career that is nothing short of extraordinary; he directed Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Lost Weekend, The Apartment and The Seven Year Itch. The man was talented.
It’s exciting when we watch a film that is at the beginning of a movement - we also saw it recently with Julie Christie in Darling. There’s a sense of scrappiness, pulling it together and trying out new ideas that is missing in later film noir. Here Wilder is focusing on tension, pace and drama - familiar facets like the slightly overwritten narration and the femme fatale are here, but they feel more organic than in other films of the genre.
The film is driven by two superb performances. Edward G Robinson as Barton Keyes is probably the best thing in it, his delivery of a small, beta-male type who obsessively sniffs out insurance-scammers is gripping. We never underrate him, and he becomes the driving force against our two anti-heroes, never wavering in the search for truth. It’s worth noting that while the company itself simply wants to avoid paying out too much money, he seems driven by higher, less financial motives - he wants to see justice. It’s a terrific, subtle performance and a brilliant driving energy throughout the production.
The other great performance is that of Stanwyck’s. At first I wondered how on earth this bland and sappy character was given so many (metaphorical) roses by critics and audiences. That’s Stanwyck’s art here, she gives us a wishy-washy woman and then very slowly peels back layer after layer until the final scene when we watch her prepare to shoot her lover, readying a gun under her chair. Even the way she moves in this final scene shows us that she has always been this cold, villainous woman performing blandness so she is never seen. I particularly liked the scene when they off the husband and the camera focuses on Stanwyck’s emotionless face as you hear her husband being throttled off-screen. It’s superb physical and inner character work at play and while I wouldn’t put it in my top performances of all time (and indeed she was beaten here by Bergman in Gaslight which IS in my top performances), it’s worthy of being remembered.
Really though, more than Stanwyck, this film for me is a tribute to director Billy Wilder and his astonishing oeuvre. The fact that he consistently got exceptional performances from his actors is testament to his clear talent, along with his exploration into new styles and themes, means he must be one of the Golden Age greats.
It’s wonderful to see film noir right at the beginning with all the elements being created rather than dropped in as tropes.
The film does drag in parts in the second half, I think there’s so much plotting that was done, I was a bit impatient for the finale.
Mark
7/10
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