Double Indemnity Analytical Review

NAME: Samuel Osagie COURSE: Film Noir TUTOR: Chris Hughes ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Film Noir Review- DOUBLE INDEMNITY DATE: 19-3-2009

DOUBLE INDEMNITY Double Indemnity is a Film Noir movie based on James M. Cain’s novel, scripted by Raymond Chandler and directed by Billy Wilder in 1944. It is a hardboiled crime movie about an insurance agent who conspires maliciously with a woman to kill her husband, a Californian oil magnet. This movie contains several key elements of Film Noir aesthetically and cynically put together. Fred MacMurray stars as an insurance man, roped by a seductive blonde femme fatale, played by Barbara Stanwyck in a gloriously bad but hot-looking wig, into taking out a policy on her husband, and then getting just enough affection from her to eagerly plan and execute her husband's death.

It begins with Walter (played by Fred MacMurray), an insurance salesman Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company, stumbling into his office late at night. Walter dripping sweat and oozing blood, clutches a Dictaphone and begins a confession, his hardboiled patter forming the movie's voiceover as his monstrous crime unfolds in a flashback. The story is about an insurance scam, Walter's cocky schmaltzy teaming with Phyllis (played by Barbara Stanwyck), a disgruntled, icy housewife to orchestrate the accidental death of her stinking rich hubby for $100,000. He comes on strong and fast ("around 90 miles an hour") and she, sporting a racy anklet that can only signify she's speedy herself, doesn't hold back. Before long, it's "honey" and "baby" all round, as they plot to bump off her uncaring spouse for the insurance money in what Walter intends to be the perfect crime, to fool even his super-efficient colleague Barton Keyes (played by Edward G Robinson). Double Indemnity was played in real streets and houses in Los Angeles instead of studiocreated replicas. The movie was designed as a series of visual contrasts between night and day, shadow and light. The opening scene of Walter’s car racing in the night through city, accompanied by a flashback of a sunny afternoon in a Spanish-style house in Pasadena, shows how day is contrasted to night in this back-to-back sequence, as the past intersect the present. The use of open framing to create closed worlds from which a sense of the flow of life has been rigorously excluded. There seems to be no world outside the frame, and there are almost no other people on view besides the characters. The camera kept its distance, offering only occasional comment through a recurrent high angle or disorienting low one. The high angle, which peers down on the character is a visual intimation of doom. It seems to trap the characters and emphasizes their helplessness against both the external and internal forces that bedevil them. The low angle shot of Phyllis in a bath towel at the top of the stairs, seen from Walter’s Point of View provides occasional disquieting images of one character’s power over another. Dramatic lightings were used to show the characters’ state of mind. Closer to perfection is the screenplay and direction. Raymond Chandler's dialogue, like Walter, “shoots along at around 90 miles an hour”, as he and Phyllis spar verbally in lieu of jumping into bed - this is cleverly implied. MacMurray and Stanwyck sparkle as the amoral duo out for themselves and Robinson provides the perfect foil as the office know-it-all.