Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay from James M. Cain's novel of the same name, which ran as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine in 1936.
The film stars an insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who plots with a woman, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), to kill her husband in order to claim a life insurance payment, arousing the suspicion of claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). The title refers to a "double indemnity" clause which doubles life insurance payouts when death occurs in a statistically rare manner.
The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Widely regarded as a classic, Double Indemnity is often cited as having set the standard for film noir and as one of the greatest films of all time. In 1992, the U.S. Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Wounded from a gunshot, insurance salesman Walter Neff stumbles late at night into his empty Los Angeles office. He records a dictaphone confession for claims manager Barton Keyes.
One year earlier, Neff flirts with Phyllis Dietrichson during a house call about her husband's automobile insurance. Phyllis asks about getting a policy on Mr. Dietrichson's life without his knowledge. Deducing that she is contemplating murder, Neff wants no part of it but is fascinated with her and struggles with temptation to use his knowledge to outsmart the insurance company. Later, Phyllis visits his apartment, where Neff concocts a plan to have Dietrichson sign a life insurance policy without realizing it, murder him, and frame it as a train-related accident to trigger the policy's double indemnity clause with a higher payout.
Dietrichson signs the policy slipped in as a "copy" of his automotive insurance renewal. Before the murder can take place, Dietrichson unexpectedly breaks his leg, delaying and complicating the scheme. Neff hides in the back seat of Phyllis's car while she drives Dietrichson to a train station. Neff strangles Dietrichson, leaving the dead body in the car with Phyllis. Wearing a plaster cast, he poses as Dietrichson aboard the train. A helpful passenger almost foils the plan, requiring Neff to keep his hat pulled low and face averted. To vacate the observation car, Neff sends him on an errand for cigars. Jumping off the train at a pre-arranged spot, Neff helps Phyllis stage Dietrichson's body on the tracks.
Neff's boss believes Dietrichson's death a suicide. A dogged claims manager proud of his eye for fraud, Keyes scoffs it is statistically implausible. Keyes finds it strange that Dietrichson did not file a claim after breaking his leg. He begins to suspect that Phyllis and an accomplice murdered Dietrichson. Reasoning that Dietrichson was unaware of the policy, Keys questions Neff, the salesman, who affirms that Dietrichson signed the policy. Based on 11 years of respect and friendship, the ordinarily suspicious Keys does not question Neff's account. Meanwhile, Neff befriends Phyllis' stepdaughter, Lola, who has a resentful boyfriend named Nino Zachetti, a medical school dropout for lack of funds. Lola tells Neff that she saw Phyllis trying on mourning clothes several days before Dietrichson's death. Lola believes Phyllis, her mother's nurse during an illness, killed her mother to marry Dietrichson. Lola now fears that Phyllis plans to kill her next for the money. Neff now begins to see the extent of Phyllis’s manipulations.
Keyes finds the witness from the train’s observation car who says that the man he saw on the train was not the Dietrichson in photos, but fails to recognize Neff, who is present. Neff warns Phyllis that pursuing the insurance claim in court risks exposing the murder. He insists that they should not see each other until the investigation ends. Nino Zachetti has been visiting Phyllis every night since the murder, and Keyes now suspects Nino is her accomplice.
Suspecting that Phyllis is now manipulating Nino to eliminate him and kill Lola, Neff confronts Phyllis and threatens to kill her. Phyllis shoots Neff, but when he comes closer and dares her to shoot again, she does not. She says that she never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot." As they embrace, Neff shoots her twice with her gun. As Neff leaves, he sees Nino walking up to the house. Neff convinces Nino to call Lola to make up with her.
Finishing recording his confession, Neff looks up to see Keyes, summoned by a janitor who saw blood drippings. When Neff asks how long Keyes has been listening, Keyes responds, "Long enough." Asking for a head start, Neff intends to flee to Mexico, but Keyes says he won’t make it to the elevator. Neff collapses in the doorway as Keyes calls for an ambulance and the police, and the two wait for them to arrive. Chuckling ruefully, Neff says that Keys couldn't solve this one because the culprit was too close, right across desk. Keyes responds, "Closer than that, Walter." Neff responds that he cares for Keyes too.
Cast
Credited
Uncredited Raymond Chandler cameo as a man reading a magazine outside Keyes' office as Neff exits Bess Flowers as Norton's secretary Betty Farrington as Nettie, Dietrichson's maid Teala Loring as Pacific All-Risk Insurance telephone operator Sam McDaniel as Charlie, Garage Attendant Miriam Nelson as Keyes' secretary Douglas Spencer as Lou Schwartz, Neff's office mate Norma Varden as the secretary who lets Mrs. Dietrichson into the insurance office Constance Purdy as a customer who brushes past Phyllis and Walter in the grocery store
Production
Background James M. Cain based his novella Double Indemnity on a 1927 murder perpetrated by Ruth Snyder, married to Albert Snyder, and her lover Henry Judd Gray, who colluded with an insurance agent to obtain a $45,000 policy with a double-indemnity clause without Albert's knowledge and then have him murdered.
Cain had become a popular crime novelist following the publication of The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1934, and Double Indemnity began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was serialized in Liberty magazine in 1936. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, RKO Radio Pictures, and Columbia competed over the rights to adapt Double Indemnity, but the fervor ended when Hays Office censor Joseph Breen warned in a letter to the studios:
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.
In 1943, Cain's novella was anthologized with two others in Three of a Kind. Paramount's Joseph Sistrom bought the rights for $15,000, envisioning Billy Wilder as the director of an adaptation. Paramount resubmitted the novella to the Hays Office and got an identical response as seven years earlier; Paramount then submitted a partial screenplay to the Hays Office. It was approved with three objections about portraying the disposal of a corpse, the gas chamber execution scene, and the skimpiness of the towel worn by the female lead.
Cain felt Joseph Breen owed him $10,000 for vetoing the purchase of the property for $25,000 in 1936.
Writing
The restrictions imposed by the Hays Code made adapting Double Indemnity a challenge. Wilder's writing partner Charles Brackett helped with the treatment before bowing out.Dobbs, Lem (commentary), Redman, Nick (commentary), Wilder, Billy (director). 2014. "Double Indemnity Feature Commentary". Blu-ray DVD. Universal Studios. Wilder characterized their time apart: "1944 was 'The Year of Infidelities'...Charlie produced The Uninvited...I don't think he ever forgave me. He always thought I cheated on him with Raymond Chandler."
Cain was Wilder's first choice as a replacement for Brackett; because Cain was working at 20th Century Fox, he was never asked to work on the film.McGilligan, Patrick (1986). Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age. Los Angeles: University of California Press. . p. 125–8 Sistrom suggested Raymond Chandler, whose 1939 novel The Big Sleep he had admired.
New to Hollywood, Chandler demanded $1,000 and at least one week to complete the screenplay, not realizing he would be paid $750 per week and that it would take fourteen.Moffat, Irving. "On the Fourth Floor of Paramount", The World of Raymond Chandler. A&W Publishers, 1977. 43–51. Wilder characterized Chandler's first draft as "useless camera instruction"; to teach Chandler screenwriting, Wilder gave him a copy of his script for Hold Back the Dawn. They did not get along during the next four months. Chandler quit once, submitting a long list of grievances about Wilder to Paramount. Chandler did agree to appear in the film, glancing up from a magazine as Neff walks outside Keyes' office; this is the only professional footage of him.
Chandler and Wilder made considerable changes to Cain's story. Because the Hays Code demanded criminals pay onscreen for their transgressions, the double suicide at the end of the novella was not permissible. The solution was to have the two protagonists mortally wound each other.Muller, Eddie (1998). Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin's Press. . 56–9. The character of Barton Keyes was changed from a fairly clueless colleague into a mentor and antagonist to Neff.
Chandler felt that Cain's dialogue would not play well onscreen, but Wilder disagreed; after he hired contract players to read passages of Cain's text aloud, he conceded to Chandler. Chandler also scouted for locations including Jerry's Market on Melrose Avenue, where Phyllis and Walter discreetly meet to plan and discuss the murder.
Chandler was a recovering alcoholic. Wilder said that "He was in Alcoholics Anonymous...I drove him back into drinking." An embittered Chandler wrote in The Atlantic Monthly in November 1945 that "The first picture I worked on was nominated for an Academy Award...but I was not even invited to the press review held right in the studio." Wilder responded, "How could we? He was under the table drunk..." Wilder's experience with Chandler drew him to adapt Charles R. Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend, about an alcoholic writer, as his next film; Wilder wanted the film "to explain Chandler to himself." Library of America included the Double Indemnity screenplay in its second volume of Chandler's work, Later Novels and Other Writings (1995).
Cain was impressed with the screenplay, calling it "the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of. Wilder's ending was much better than my ending, and his device for letting the guy tell the story by taking out the office dictating machine – I would have done it if I had thought of it."