DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder
SCREENPLAY: Billy Wilder & Raymond Chandler, from the novel by James M Cain
PHOTOGRAPHY: John Seitz
COSTUME DESIGNER: Edith Head
MUSIC: Miklós Rózsa
WITH: Fred MacMurray (Walter Neff), Barbara Stanwyck (Phyllis Dietrichson), Edward G Robinson (Barton Keyes), Porter Hall (Mr Jackson), Tom Powers (Mr Dietrichson) 

REVIEW

Based on the James M Cain novel of the same name, adapted by director Billy Wilder and genre icon Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity forever set the standard for film noir.  An insurance salesman – a pre-My Three Sons Fred MacMurray – falls for the anklet-wearing charms of an unhappy housewife, Barbara Stanwyck.  If only she could be rid of her spouse, they could be happy.  How about knocking him off for the insurance money?
 
If it lacks the heavy chiaroscuro lighting and stylised camera angles of later noirs, the clarity of the writing and performances lend the material an uncommon power and there's sex and black humour to spare.  Stanwyck makes for a prototypical femme fatale and Edward G Robinson, in a rare sympathetic role, shines as MacMurray's work colleague and ultimate foil: "...a fussy little treat", as critic David Thomson puts it.
 
Cain said that "it's the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of."  Specifically, he alluded to the framing device by which MacMurray narrates via dictaphone and the perfectly realised ending.  But everything's perfect in this one.

— Richard Swainson, Hamilton Film Society

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

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