Flag Product

Double Indemnity (1944)

Add to my list

Send to friend

Compare prices

Shop for it: (added from 1 site)

Buy itfilmsite.org

See more products from this brand »

Added by 5 people

alisa

anacker added to anacker's Top...

atulgupta added to Top 100 Movies

bubumumu added to fav movies

See all »

0 Hearts

Description:

Double Indemnity (1944) is director Billy Wilder's classic film noir masterpiece - a cynical, witty, and sleazy thriller about adultery, corruption and murder. The urgently-told, highly-stylized story was Wilder's third film after... See more » Double Indemnity (1944) is director Billy Wilder's classic film noir masterpiece - a cynical, witty, and sleazy thriller about adultery, corruption and murder. The urgently-told, highly-stylized story was Wilder's third film after The Major and the Minor (1942) and Five Graves to Cairo (1943). Wilder effectively used locales in the greater Los Angeles area: the Glendale train station, the Hollywood Bowl, 'Jerry's Market,' a night-time downtown office building, a Spanish-style house on Quebec St., the protagonist's apartment at the Chateau Marmont, etc. The material for Double Indemnity was derived from 'hard-boiled' James M. Cain's 1943 melodramatic novella Three of a Kind that first appeared in 1935 in abridged, 8-part serial form in Liberty Magazine. It was adapted for the screen by director Billy Wilder and detective novelist Raymond Chandler (who was best known for his character Philip Marlowe, played by Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944), Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), and Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake (1946), among others). [Cain's first infamous novel was a 1934 best-seller that was also staged in 1936 and made into a film in both 1946 and 1981 - Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with John Garfield and Lana Turner, and Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1942, It.) was an unauthorized version of Cain's work - the first of the three. Another of Cain's 1941 novels was also made into a popular film noir with Joan Crawford - Mildred Pierce (1945).] This great film noir received no Academy Awards, although it was nominated in seven categories: Best Picture, Best Actress (Barbara Stanwyck with her third nomination and a career total of over 40 films), Best Director (Wilder's first directorial nomination for only his third film as director), Best Screenplay (co-scriptwriters Chandler and Wilder), Best B/W Cinematography (John Seitz, working together with Wilder on the second of four films), Best Sound Recording (Loren Ryder), and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Miklos Rozsa). [This was Wilder's fourth nomination as screenwriter, after nominations for Ninotchka (1939), Ball of Fire (1941) and Hold Back the Dawn (1941).] Its major competition came from Leo McCarey's 'feel-good' film Going My Way - undoubtedly, Double Indemnity's hard-boiled themes and cold cynicism hurt its chances for the top prize, during the war years. It was a tremendous oversight that both Edward G. Robinson (as supporting actor) and Fred MacMurray (as lead actor) were denied Academy Award nominations. Robinson had never received a nomination during his entire career. Both Robinson and Fred MacMurray played roles against type (Robinson gained notoriety for his role as a gangster in Little Caesar (1930), and MacMurray had previously played genial, lightweight, good-guy roles in comedies) - and their performances represented some of their best career work. [MacMurray would star in another against-type, bad-guy role in Wilder's The Apartment (1960).] Actually, this was also Stanwyck's first unsympathetic villainess role, something she would later reprise in Walk on the Wild Side (1962). This seminal tale, told in the past tense (in voice-over), involves two major characters with "an unholy love and an almost perfect crime." (The names of the main characters in the original novel were Walter Huff and Phyllis Nordlinger.) Both are duplicitous and callous lovers - a beautiful, shrewd, predatory and dissatisfied femme fatale housewife (with blonde bangs and an enticing gold anklet) and a likeable insurance salesman. Their calculated, cold-blooded scheme to brutally murder her husband for purposes of lustful desire and financial gain, because of a double indemnity clause in his accident policy, ultimately fails. Their fraudulent, almost perfect crime leads to guilt, suspicion, betrayal, duplicity, and thrilling intrigue in a film with numerous swatches of sharp and nasty dialogue. It was billed as "Paramount's SHOCKING, SUSPENSE-FILLED MASTERPIECE OF LOVE...AND MURDER." From its opening sequence, the film identifies with the self-destructive murderer and his murder plot, using the metaphor of a train ride with the evil heroine that goes "all the way...to the end of the line." Its tagline from a poster declared: "You can't kiss away a Murder!" The sensational film was unlike many other films of its time - its storyline of a deliberate and brutal crime was considered innately amoral, objectionable, and distasteful by the censorious Hays Office (a "blueprint for the perfect murder"). Originally, a gruesome execution scene at the end of the film, in which the claims manager watched as the convicted protagonist was led to the death chamber at San Quentin, was cut, discarded, and replaced with its present ending - one in which the murderer was also justly punished for his crime. [The film's story was based on a real-life crime in March of 1927 perpetrated by married Queens, NY housewife Ruth (Brown) Snyder and her lover, a 32 year-old corset salesman Judd Gray. She persuaded her "Lover Boy" to kill her husband Albert, editor of Motor Boating magazine, after having her spouse take out a $48,000 insurance policy - with a double-indemnity clause. But their sloppy, conspiratorial murder was quickly detected and they were apprehended. Both were convicted and sentenced to death - and were electrocuted in January of 1928 at Sing Sing. An infamous tabloid picture, surreptitiously taken (with a camera strapped to his ankle) by news photographer Thomas Howard of Ruth's body as she was executed, was published on the front page of the New York Daily News. The Snyder-Gray case in the late 1920s prompted the release of Picture Snatcher (1933) - it starred James Cagney as the daring newspaper photographer who took the taboo picture of a woman dying in the electric chair. It was remade as Escape From Crime (1942).] The influence of this definitive film noir can be found in other countless imitations ever since - such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and (1981), Body Heat (1981) (with Richard Crenna as the murdered husband and Kathleen Turner as the murderess accomplice), and The Last Seduction (1994) (with Linda Fiorentino), but it has never been surpassed. It also inspired two TV films: a 1954 version with Frank Lovejoy, Laraine Day, and Ray Collins, and the ABC-TV 1973 inferior remake for its "Movie of the Week," starring Samantha Eggar, Lee J. Cobb and Richard Crenna. And the supermarket scene, with actual clips from the film, was spoofed in Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982). See less »

Tags:

1944, double indemnity, movies

Flag Comments

Comments (1)

From the list : stella123's Fave Movies by stella123

Great film, love this !

Add a Comment:

Not a Kaboodler? Join Now, It's Free!

Email:

Screen Name:

Password:

Birthday:

Security Check
(Reload)

Enter Both Words

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service

Remember me on this computer.

Kaboodle will send you a newsletter and updates from your friends. You can unsubscribe at any time. Kaboodle does not sell or share your email address or personal information with anyone.

Cancel Already a Kaboodler? Sign in

Double Indemnity (1944)

Comments (1)

Add a Comment:

Thanks for Hearting!

Not a Kaboodler? Join Now, It's Free!

Sign in to Kaboodle