Cinema
Double Indemnity
Billy Wilder · 1944
Synopsis
Los Angeles, 1938. Walter Neff, an insurance agent, calls on the Dietrichsons to renew the husband's car insurance, and Phyllis greets him at the top of the stairs, wearing a bath towel. On a later visit, she asks whether it is possible to insure her husband's life without his knowledge; he understands and leaves. She comes to his apartment that evening, and he agrees. He devises the plan: an accident policy with a double indemnity clause, which doubles the sum insured if death occurs in a rare way, on a train for example.
Context
The subject comes from a story by James M. Cain published in a magazine in 1936, drawn from the Snyder and Gray case: in 1927, in New York, a woman and her lover had killed the husband to collect on an insurance policy that paid double in case of accidental death. Wilder wanted to write with Cain, who was held by another studio; the producer Joseph Sistrom suggested Raymond Chandler, and their collaboration was so painful that Chandler later wrote that it had probably shortened his life. The lead role was hard to cast: George Raft would only have accepted if it was revealed at the end that he was a policeman.
Who it is for
A black-and-white film noir lasting one hour forty-seven, told after the fact by the guilty man himself.
Prizes and reception
Seven Oscar nominations without a single award; added in 1992 to the National Film Registry of the United States.
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