Double Indemnity

It's the kind of murder that starts with an anklet. The anklet leads up to the face of Barbara Stanwyck, she may be in a cheap blond wig, but it's still Barbara Stanwyck. She has this plan to kill her husband for the insurance money, in order for the insurance to double, she has to make it look like an accident, instead of $50.000 she would get $100.000, it's a clause by the insurance company called double indemnity. Why does Barbara Stanwyck, feel like she can get away with this? Because she's Barbara Stanwyck, meaning she's tough, she's sexy, and men want her, men like Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), he's an insurance salesmen, and from the sound of it, a very smart insurance salesman. Walter's no idiot, unless it comes to an anklet worn by Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson. Of course, the anklet wasn't the first thing Walter saw, when he saw Phyllis, it was actually her ontop a flight of stairs just getting out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her. She came down the stairs fully clothed, but the anklet was all that was on his mind.

We get the sense Walter's no dummy, but that might be just because the words coming out of his mouth were written for him by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler. It doesn't take long for Walter to figure it out, Phyllis wants her husband out of the way. At first he rejects the idea, then Phyllis comes to his house, and some how, he finds himself convinced that murder is the only way to be with this wild, unpredictable woman.

The plan is set, Walter and Phyllis kill the husband, Walter pretends to be the husband on a train, he jumps off making it look like an accident, everything is done, he traces his steps, he's so very careful, it' all working out well. That is of course except for Walter's boss Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Keyes is an insurance investigator, a very good one, he usually can tell if an insurance claim is real or phony, he has a fool proof way of knowing, he's got a little man inside his stomach that bothers him everytime there's something fishy. But this crime may be too tough for Keyes to crack, because not only is he Walter's boss, he also his best friend, but Walter is more and more on edge, which only makes Phyllis more dangerous.

Things aren't looking well for Walter, but still there's that anklet, maybe the only thing he can hold on to, there isn't much to hold on to in the world of film noir, but I suppose Walter didn't realize that was the world he fell into once Phyllis appeared before him with that towel around her. That's certainly what Billy Wilder had in mind when he read the novella by James M. Cain who wrote another book very similar to this "The Postman always Rings Twice". That book was made into a classic film noir too, but "Double Indemnity" is the richer one, the characters just seem so much smarter, they're headed for trouble, but it's such an entertaining ride with this script and those words. Robinson's character is an extra added substance too, you could say film noir doesn't have many heroes, at least ones who have no morality, but Keyes does. Keyes might be Billy Wilder, the small, smart, funny little man who sees through the facade of crime, the lies, the contempt for law, and he does it with a flare for cynicism. There's a part of us who want Walter and Phyllis to get away with there plan, because if they get caught, the movie has to end, yet we want Keyes to solve the case, because he's the one honest guy in the whole mess.

Of course, tragedy is always at the end of the road in film noir, for Walter, for Phyllis, and even for Keyes. If only Walter was just a little more smarter, if he had only noticed the darkly lit rooms he always found himself in, or the fact that every drape on the windows reflected bars of a jail cell on his face, or the fact that the woman with that anklet, and that towel around her at the top of the stairs was Barbara Stanwyck, then Walter could've ran away for good instead of getting into all that trouble, then again, what fun would it have been for us?