Film noir double indemnity analysis
How he hooked up with the icily beautiful Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) and conned her rich, unloving husband into signing a life insurance policy (with bonus double indemnity clause) he didn't want, so they could murder him and collect the dosh how love turned sour and mutual suspicion had fatal consequences.
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He's shot and bleeding and he's recounting, via an office dictaphone recording to his mentor Barton Keyes (Robinson), his tale of love, murder and betrayal. Like Billy Wilder's other coldblooded, consummate film noir, Sunset Boulevard, where the hero begins his narration from the swimming pool in which he floats, dead, you know things are unlikely to go well for Walter Neff (MacMurray). And it also has a trio of superb performances: Fred MacMurray, who tended to play amiable chumps, was here recast as a devious murderer (though still a bit of a chump) Barbara Stanwyck, as the deadliest of femme fatales and Edward G Robinson, the career-gangster now turned softy with "a heart as big as a house".
Film noir double indemnity analysis movie#
Who would have thought a movie about an insurance guy could be so bitter, so suspenseful, so heartbreaking? I love Double Indemnity because it's about a couple who are cheap and greedy, but achieve a kind of tragic heroism because it has one of the great father-son relationships (although they aren't actually father and son) because it's a thoroughly cynical thriller redeemed by just a fading touch of romance.