Critics reviews

It achieves what all great art aspires to do—it creates a universe of its own. Is such a universe naturalistic? To some extent, I suppose, although that is not the point. Rather, what's evoked is a moral landscape, in which we slip between stark polarities: identifying with the characters, their longing and their damage, while also recognizing their downfall, its inevitability, as a cautionary tale.

The "walk of a dead man" ("I couldn't hear my own footsteps") points to Sunset Blvd., the nettlesome blabbermouth on the train's observation deck is a feint taken up by Robbe-Grillet. "Do I laugh now or wait 'til it gets funny?" Variations and tributes left and right (Cronaca di un Amore, The Prowler, Body Heat, The Man Who Wasn't There) can't blunt the sting of Wilder's acidic noir benchmark.

Wilder's astute direction of the crooked lovers amidst darkness and asphalt echoes is a film phenomenon that will reign supreme for decades to come.

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray become unforgettable, delicious clichés the minute they cock their eyebrows at one another in and around Billy Wilder's shadowy L.A. interiors.

Do I risk shedding any semblance of critical detachment if I describe Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck's onscreen interactions as wildly sexy? Very well, then; I risk it, but only because that eroticism is a cornerstone of everything this film accomplishes... Their mutual attraction pervades Double Indemnity, though it's less like that of two people in love and more like the behavior of apex predators circling one another, each scoping out the other's potential as a mate.

There are earlier examples of the style known as film noir, and goodness knows many later ones, but this is echt noir. "I didn't get the money, and I didn't get the girl," Neff announces at the opening; as Brian De Palma observed, you can't get much more noir than that. It's often very funny, and intentionally so... But it's also tragic, with a killer fadeout, and it's a great introduction to the peerless Stanwyck and Robinson.

With so many imitators, DOUBLE INDEMNITY shines with wonderful idiosyncrasies: Neff on crutches imitating a broken-legged Mr. Dietrichson, the unabashed sexiness of Mrs. Dietrichson, the authentic bare bulb dialogue, and so many venetian blinds. Without them, the murder and investigation might become overly flat.

Always a versatile actor, equally capable of playing party girls and strong-willed women, Stanwyck introduces the right amount of emotional complexity into a narrative that could easily have stayed locked in the linear death-ride of a self-pitying, self-destructive male narrator. Double Indemnity thus becomes her story, too: an erotic descent into mutual masochism, straight down the line.

Already proving her mettle in screwball comedy, Stanwyck took on the dark art of film noir with nasty brilliance. Creating one of noir's most inspired, iconic femmes fatales, Stanwyck's double-crossing, bitch-seductress Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's seminal Double Indemnity remains unparalleled.

There are double-crosses galore, but holding it all together are some unforgettable insights about post-war America and lower-middle-class desperation. Woody Allen considers it the greatest film ever made, and it shows, given the numerous references in his recent CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION and MATCH POINT.

Barbara Stanwyck is perfectly cast as a Los Angeles dragon lady burdened with too much time, too much money, and a dull husband. Fred MacMurray (less effectively) is the fly-by-night insurance salesman who hopes to relieve her of all three. Wilder trades Cain's sun-rot imagery for conventional film noir stylings, but the atmosphere of sexual entrapment survives.

The film on its own level is a smooth, talented job of writing and directing, with some very bright, realistic perceptions of the kind of people and places that rarely get into American movies, and some adequate playing—especially the monolithic MacMurray, who is less that way than he has ever been, by Tom Powers as the soured husband, and by Robinson, who is a mousy creature, but an aggressive, masterful sleuth. However, it leaves me on the cold side of interested.