Noir...

...is a delightful word.  Noir.  Say it again.  It's a great word.  It's not "ours," of course, but damn, that's a great word.

Oddly, that word appears to have major significance on this latest journey into the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition).  We're onto the last bloc of 5 films on the list that I'd not seen before.  After that, I'm watching the 10 I saved for last.  Want to see the latest chart?  It's here.  I've watched 2 others since I watched this one, so I'm down to 2, but I'm not admitting that in writing.  Wait.  Shit.

Film 86

86.  "Double Indemnity" (AFI Rank #29)

It is going to be impossible for me to write this up without talking about the ending, or MAJOR plot points that give away the ending.  As such, if you haven't seen it, and you want to see this movie without any knowledge of what might happen, I'd advise skipping this.  Come back after you've seen it.  I'm serious.  Go on.  This will be here when you return.

Know what's great about this project?  Getting to see movies that "on the cover" don't look as if they'd appeal to me.  I've long had a prejudice against old films.  The patter, the music, the acting that wasn't quite gritty, the stories that had to end happy, or "right," with the right people being punished.  All that stuff rubbed me wrong.  It has been a privilege to get to watch a bunch of movies I'd have otherwise dismissed. This film, folks, is one of them.

My DVR is stuffed with brilliant films, recorded from TCM, or Retroplex, or HBO, or whatever.  The ones from TCM usually include the commentary by Ben Mankiewicz or Robert Osborne before or after the film. Mankiewicz did this one.  During his introduction, he called this film the "definitive" film noir.  I'm not sure about that.  Then again, having seen it, and fallen in love with it immediately, I'm not sure he's wrong.

Told as "confessional" into a wax cylinder dictaphone, this film tells us the story of Walter Neff, insurance salesman, who meets and falls for the wrong woman, a Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson.  He then sells her unwitting husband an accident insurance policy worth $100,000, kills him, then watches his perfectly concocted, never-get-caught scheme unravel.  He winds up shooting the femme fatale (twice - just to make sure), takes an eventually fatal shot from her himself, then goes to his office to confess his story to the guy who figured him out, Insurance Claims Agent Extraordinaire (and Neff's best friend), Barton Keyes.  That's the story.

That story is kinda blandish/formulaic.  What isn't bland about this film, however, is the writing.  Breakneck pacing in speech, combined with innuendo-laden witty repartee are really what make this thing sizzle.  Here's an example (and as I was watching it, I hoped I'd be able to find this whole exchange):

Phyllis: Mr. Neff, why don't you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty. He'll be in then.
Walter Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren't you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I'm sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I'd say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.

That exchange, taken from Neff's first encounter with Phyllis Dietrichson BRISTLES with sexual energy, flirtation, seduction, you name it.  It's terribly engaging.  This film was written (among others) and directed by Billy Wilder.  Wilder, as you may or may not know, has 4 films in the AFI Top 100, tying him with Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick for second most.  Spielberg is first with 5.  Just for a minute, I'm going to let you think about that.  1 out of every 6 of the "Greatest" American films were made by one of those 4 men. Throw in Charlie Chaplin (or Francis Ford Coppola, or John Huston, or Martin Scorsese), and it's 1 out of every 5 -  by 5 men.  That's crazy.  And not.  Wilder was a genius.  Here's a further confession.  I had, before I started this in 2014, only seen his film "Irma La Douce," and that was when I was much younger. It is also funny to think that one of his two Best Picture winners, "The Lost Weekend," isn't on this list.  Wilder, as I said, wasn't the only credited writer.  Raymond Chandler is also credited as a writer.  I don't know his work well enough to comment on him.  This work, however, is tremendous.  

I've rambled a bit about Wilder above.  It is hard to imagine that the same guy who understood comedy SO well ("The Apartment," "Some Like It Hot") also directed this film and "Sunset Blvd."  This film, as I talked about above, is a noir.  The protagonist is constantly on screen, and the entire film flows through him.  Beyond that, the shadows, the use of light, etc. to create mood...amazing.  Simply amazing.  I'm trying to include as many photos as possible that show the use of light in this.  The first photo is most indicative of what was being created.  Look through the window.  It's a sunny Los Angeles day outside. Inside?  It's dark, dusty, hidden.  The filmmakers added dust to the air to achieve "sunbeam" effects, but also to show that behind any closed door could be something rotting.  Like the marriage between Phyllis and Mr. Dietrichson.  The cinematography in this is breathtaking.  Truly.  Which is odd, as it is mostly interiors.

Acting.  Edward G. Robinson plays the smallest role of our leads, Barton Keyes.  Robinson hardly

possesses a deep, rich tool box of emotions available to him at a moment's notice.  However, in this film, in this role, he's perfect.  I'll address a little of his character below, but I liked him in this.  A lot.  I tend to be a sucker for guys bound by logic, though.  Plus, as Neff says, Robinson actually makes us believe he's got a heart as big as a house.  The exchange at the end of the film, as Neff collapses in the doorway, dying of his gunshot wound, and his friend Keyes comes to him, helping him light his blood-soaked cigarette is stirring:  

Walter Neff: Know why you couldn't figure this one, Keyes? I'll tell ya. 'Cause the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from ya.
Barton Keyes: Closer than that, Walter.
Walter Neff: I love you, too.

Barbara Stanwyck plays our succubus, our black widow, our femme fatale, whatever you want to call her.  Dripping sex appeal from the moment we first see her, as she's just come from the pool and is obviously naked except a towel, Phyllis draws us (through Neff) in immediately.  Played with just the right amount of ambition combined with steely-eyed cool, we want Phyllis, while being repelled by her.  I do think it is humorous that the tools that are supposed to show her "looseness" are an anklet and a wig, given today's mores, but hey, it worked in 1944.  There isn't, by the end, a whole lot to like about Phyllis.  We are told that she killed Dietrichson's first wife, then married him.  When she is shot and killed at the end, we kinda think she got what was coming to her.  That she wound up killing Neff as well...well.  That's gravy.  

Fred MacMurray, who was an incredibly likable actor, takes on the role of murderer in this, and plays it with great aplomb.  A great deal of the feelings that we get about the people we watch in this film are formulated through Neff's dying ramblings into the dictaphone.  It takes a lot of skill to do narration well.  When you toss  in the lines that Neff speaks in these moments, which are so exquisite, into the pressure he faces as an actor, you really appreciate the performance.  We have to feel like Neff got taken on a ride, for sure.  However, did he?  He's kinda the one that got the ball rolling on the whole thing in the first place.  And he's the prick who planned it all.  It's a balancing act that a lot of great actors have failed to achieve - playing a character who CHOOSES to be evil.  Oft-times we are left with an archetype.  Thinking actors make us understand why the character chose his/her path.  MacMurray does that, in spades, in this. It's a remarkable performance, and given my prejudices about acting in this era, I'm ashamed that I got it so wrong.  So wrong.  Look how accessible Neff is early on in the film, how jocular, how friendly.  Watch that strip away as the film goes on...and watch him recapture it when he realizes it's over for him.  It's a whirlwind, subtle performance.  Have I mentioned how great it is?  Good. 

I have to quibble about just a couple of things.  The first is that I cannot believe that an Insurance Claims Manager is the greatest detective on the planet.  That's kinda what's portrayed her in Keyes.  It's funny that this guy coaxes confessions out of people, then we never see the police.  That's funny to me.  The other quibble has to do with the confession.  I can forgive it if I believe that Neff knows he's dead.  Otherwise, except that he wants to make sure Keyes knows what happened, I can't believe he just wouldn't go to Keyes' house and do it all in person.  Maybe the impersonal separates him from his dear friend.  I don't know.  I just know that the entire premise of the film is dependent on this confession, and it doesn't feel like it would ACTUALLY happen.  I'll forgive it, though, as it makes for terrific storytelling.

This was the last of the Billy Wilder films I got to watch in this journey.  I think, if anything, I've learned that not all great film directors got their start sometime in the late 60s or 70s.  There were master craftsmen making amazing films long before Hollywood finally got sophisticated enough to trust the audience to see life's ugliness in gritty realistic terms.  Wilder had the advantage of having to be clever.  And the man was.  He really was. Of the 4 films he placed in the list, 3 of them were in the top 30.  That's a testament to the man's greatness. Watch his films.  That's the best testament I can give.


If you've seen this film, you know how great it is.  If you haven't, and I've just ruined the ending, I suggest you watch it anyway, as it's a great, great piece of art.

Ebert's take is here. Ebert has the advantage of multiple viewings.  I don't.  I do like his questioning why the criminals even commit their crimes. That's heady stuff.  I look forward to examining that angle next time I watch the film.