Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5480 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-12
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and writer Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck: kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy (notably in the TV series My Three Sons and the movie The Shaggy Dog), is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown

Synopsis
Wilder's classic noir, a familiar brew of lust, larceny, and lethal intentions, stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as a hot-blooded couple. Framed in flashback, the story is told by the dying Walter Neff (MacMurray), beginning with his first meeting with the seductive Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) during a routine renewal of her husband's car insurance. After some flirtation she arranges a meeting without her husband, where she asks about an accident policy to be bought without her husband's knowledge. Although repulsed by the implications of her suggestions, his obsession with Phyllis leads Neff to contemplate the possibility of finding a way to kill her husband while making his death look like an accident. After she comes to his apartment, the insurance salesman finally agrees to become involved in the murder, and the two of them begin methodically working out the details. After the they dispose of Dietrichson, Neff learns more than he wanted about Phyllis' unsavoury past, but realises he's now too involved to extricate himself. He's also concerned about his a boss (Barton Keyes) Edward G. Robinson, an omniscient insurance investigator who has taken over the case. A brilliant noir, among the best of the genre, with a byzantine yet utterly plausible plot, stylised hard-boiled dialogue by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and three terrific performances by Stanwyck MacMurray and Robinson.

Customer Reviews

Film Noir Typified
Quite simply the best film noir. Class acting and brilliant camera shots/angles. The techniques used completly typify the film noir genre, from the use of dark lighting to venetian blinds. The narrative again follows the basic film noir structure; a dark storyline, a weak male dominated by a 'Femme-fatale' the stronger woman that is in control instead of the male. The acting from Fred MacMurray is amazing as you would expect from him. If you would like to find out what film noir really is, then this is your film!
I RATE THIS 5 OUT OF 5 _________RECOMMENDED

Good, but not THAT good
I'm afraid that, despite its pedigree and high reputation, Double Indemnity still just doesn't grab me that much. Partially it's because the film simply isn't good enough to live up to its reputation, but largely because of the disastrous miscasting of Barbara Stanwyck, who simply doesn't sell as the kind of woman you'd kill for. Enter a dodgy real estate deal or run confidence tricks with, sure, but she's just not the kind of gal to make a feller's privates jump up and do tricks until he's so desperate he'll kill her husband for her, and the trashy wardrobe and wig just makes her seem even less likely. She doesn't give a bad performance, but she's the wrong actress in the wrong movie. Fred McMurray isn't a perfect fit either as the easily corrupted insurance man behind the plan, but he at least is able to twist his image enough to more or less get away with it, even if at times it does feel like you're watching the local scout master and the church organist in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire... Edward G. Robinson fares better in a part that relies more on fast-talking statistics than especially good dialog (there are far fewer gems here than in probably any other Wilder film), but his character still feels more like a plot device than a person at times, only really delivering some genuine humanity in his last couple of scenes. Don't get me wrong, it's an okay film - just not in any way an outstanding one.

Unlike the US two-disc special edition, the UK DVD has no extras at all.

Not a noir
The credits of "Double Indeminity" are odd. They roll over the silhouette of a man on crutches walking slowly towards the audience. Anyone watching it when it came out would assume that this was a man who was war-wounded, but the reference is misleading because the film is I think unique among so-called Noirs in that it takes place well in the past, in 1938. Maybe this is because presenting this story as contemporary during the height of the war effort would be seen as undermining morale.

"Double Indemnity" is 1944 and meant to be the epitome of Noir, but I don't think it's a Noir, for the following reasons. Film Noir is visual, a thing dreams, nights and shadows. "DI" is chippily, relentlessly talkative. Nobody ever stops. We should be grateful for this, since the talk is Raymond Chandler mostly (he co-wrote with Wilder, but the script has his world-weary, wisecracking fingerprints all over it).

Secondly, Noir is about people with small lives and big dreams, yearning to escape from circumstance and never quite making it. Essentially it's a romantic genre. The people here are simply rats, rotten. "I've always been rotten," says Stanwyck, matter-of-factly, but there is no clue why. So they kill for money, but they don't need money, money won't bring them their heart's desire. They are middle-class, and Noir is about blue collar America and the need to escape from drudgery. Wilder isn't interested in character at all, with the exception of Edward G Robinson as Barton Keyes the insurance investigator, but even his character is really a matter of tics and mannerisms.

There have been suggestions of miscasting here, particularly of Stanwyck, but Stanwyck is capable of playing Rotten, and sexy Rotten too (see "Forty Guns" Forty Guns [DVD] [1957] - if she is given the material to do it. No the real problem is MacMurray. The motor of the plot is meant to be his irresistable passion for Stanwyck, but that pudding face and choked thin-lipped delivery is only really capable of mild indigestion. People can't help their faces, and MacMurray is fine in light comedy, but here...?

Although he's all wrong, on a technical level he and Stanwyck handle the dialogue very well. But all we're left with is an intricate little cuckoo-clock of a plot as betrayal piles on betrayal, and a feeling that it's all a bit of a fuss about nothing. Wilder is thought to be a satirist but he creates no disturbance. At heart he wants to please Middle America, so good wins, bad loses and Middle America can sleep safely in its beds.