Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film noir, directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. The script was based on James M. Cain's 1943 novella of the same title which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine.

 

The film stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead, and Edward G. Robinson as a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims. The term double indemnity refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in cases when death is caused by accidental means.
 

Praised by many critics when first released, Double Indemnity was nominated for seven Academy Awards but did not win any. Widely regarded as a classic, it is often cited as a paradigmatic film noir and as having set the standard for the films that followed in that genre.

 

Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1992, Double Indemnity was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 1998, it was ranked #38 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century, and in 2007 it was 29th on their 10th Anniversary list.

 

Plot

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), a successful insurance salesman for Pacific All Risk, returns to his office building in downtown Los Angeles late one night. He is clearly in pain as he sits down at his desk and begins dictating a memo into a Dictaphone machine for colleague Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a claims adjuster. The dictation becomes the story of the film, which is told in flashback:

 

Neff first meets the alluring Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) during a routine house call to renew an automobile insurance policy for her husband. A flirtation develops, at least until Phyllis asks how she could take out a policy on her husband's life without his knowing it. Neff realizes she is contemplating murder, and he wants no part of it.

 

Phyllis pursues Neff to his own home, though, and ups the ante — or at least the voltage — of her flirtation; Neff's gullibility and libido quickly overcome his caution, and he agrees that the two of them, together, will kill her husband. Neff knows all the tricks of his trade, of course, and comes up with a plan in which Phyllis's husband will die an unlikely death, in this case falling from a moving train. The "accidental" nature of his demise will trigger the "double indemnity" clause of the policy, forcing Pacific All Risk to pay the widow twice the normal amount.

 

The couple carry out their plan. Neff hides in the back seat of the car that Phyllis is driving, and kills Mr. Dietrichson. Neff, escorted by Phyllis, then boards the train, pretending to be her husband on a trip to Palo Alto for a college reunion. He uses a pair of crutches because Dietrichson has recently broken a leg. He also identifies himself as Dietrichson to a passenger from Oregon he encounters after the train pulls out of the station. Neff jumps off, safely, and he and Phyllis place Dietrichson's body on the tracks. Phyllis drives Neff home.

 

Mr. Norton, the company's chief, believes the death was suicide and is prepared to settle with Phyllis; but, Investigator Keyes dissuades him by quoting statistics indicating the improbability of suicide, to Neff's initial delight.

 

Keyes does not suspect foul play at first, but the "little man" in his chest keeps nagging that all is not right with this case. He eventually concludes that the Dietrichson woman and some unknown accomplice must be behind the husband's death. He has no reason to be suspicious of Neff, a colleague he has worked with for quite some time and actually views with considerable paternal affection.

 

Keyes, however, is not Neff's only worry. The victim's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), comes to him, convinced that stepmother Phyllis is behind her father's death: it seems Lola's mother also died under suspicious circumstances — while Phyllis was her nurse. Neff's concern goes beyond his fear that Lola might blow the whistle on the murder; he is not such a heel that he doesn't begin to care about what might happen to the girl, whose parents have both been murdered.

 

Keyes, now suspecting Dietrichson was murdered, is prepared to reject the claim and force Mrs. Dietrichson to sue in order to expose her. Neff warns Phyllis not to sue and admits he has been talking to Lola about her past.

 

Then he learns Phyllis is seeing Lola's boyfriend Nino behind her — and his own — back. Phyllis's brazen unfaithfulness helps wake Neff from his romantic haze and he wants to save himself from his dire involvement with her and with murder. He reasons that the only way out is to make the police think Phyllis and Nino did the murder, which is what the tenacious Keyes now believes anyway.

 

Neff and Phyllis meet at her house and she tells him she has been seeing Nino only to provoke him into killing the suspicious Lola in a jealous rage. Neff is now wholly disgusted and is about to kill Phyllis when she shoots him first. Badly wounded but still standing, he advances on her, taunting her to shoot again. She does not shoot and he takes the gun from her. She says she never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot." Neff coldly says he does not believe her; she tries hugging him tightly but then pulls away and looks pleadingly at him when she feels the gun pressed against her side. Neff says "Goodbye, baby," then shoots twice and kills her.

 

Outside, Neff hides in the bushes and intercepts Nino as he approaches, ostensibly to visit his lover, Phyllis. Neff advises him to not enter the house, but to leave and contact "the woman who truly loves you" — Lola. Nino agrees and heads out, avoiding what would have been damning evidence against him if he'd entered the murder house.

 

Neff, gravely injured, drives to his office, seats himself at the Dictaphone, and starts explaining. Keyes arrives in mid-confession and hears enough to understand everything. Neff tells Keyes he is going to Mexico rather than face a death sentence — but sags to the floor before he can reach the elevator. Keyes comforts him and sadly says, "Walter, you're all washed up." Looking up at Keyes, Neff says the reason Keyes couldn't solve the case was because Neff was "too close" as a fellow employee. Keyes tells Neff he was "closer than that." Neff responds, "I love you too," and puts a cigarette in his mouth. Neff is unable to light the match with his thumb, as he has done throughout the film, so Keyes lights it with his.

 

Cast

• Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff

• Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson

• Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes

• Porter Hall as Mr Jackson

• Jean Heather as Lola Dietrichson

• Tom Powers as Mr Dietrichson

• Byron Barr as Nino Zachetti

• Richard Gaines as Edward S. Norton, Jr.

• Fortunio Bonanova as Sam Garlopis

• John Philliber as Joe Peters

• Raymond Chandler as man reading book (cameo)

 

Production

Background

James M. Cain based his novella on a 1927 murder perpetrated by a married Queens, New York woman and her lover whose trial he attended while working as a journalist in New York.In that crime, Ruth Snyder persuaded her boyfriend, Judd Gray, to kill her husband Albert after having him take out a big insurance policy — with a double-indemnity clause.The murderers were quickly identified, arrested and convicted. The front page photo of Snyder's execution in the electric chair at Sing Sing has been called the most famous newsphoto of the 1920s.

 

Double Indemnity began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was published in Liberty magazine in 1935. Cain had already made a name for himself the year before with The Postman Always Rings Twice, a story of murder and passion between a migrant worker and the unhappy wife of a café owner. Cain's agent sent copies of the novella to all the major studios and within days, MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Columbia were all competing to buy the rights for $25,000. Then a letter went out from Joseph Breen at the Hays Office, and the studios withdrew their bids as one. In it Breen warned:

 

The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story makes it, in our judgment, thoroughly unacceptable for screen presentation before mixed audiences in the theater. I am sure you will agree that it is most important…to avoid what the code calls "the hardening of audiences," especially those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime.

 

Eight years later Double Indemnity was included in a collection of Cain's works entitled Three of a Kind. Paramount executive Joseph Sistrom thought the material would be perfect for Wilder and they bought the rights for $15,000.Paramount resubmitted the script to the Hays Office, but the response was nearly identical to the one eight years earlier. Wilder, Paramount executive William Dozier, and Sistrom decided to move forward anyway. They submitted a film treatment crafted by Wilder and his writing partner Charles Brackett,and this time the Hays Office approved the project with only a few objections: the portrayal of the disposal of the body, a proposed gas-chamber execution scene, and the skimpiness of the towel worn by the female lead in her first scene.

 

Cain forever after maintained that Joseph Breen owed him $10,000 for vetoing the property back in 1935 when he would have received $25,000.