Movie #53 – Double Indemnity (1944) - 107 min, cert PG.
Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is a hotshot insurance agent. He visits a client to get him to renew his car insurance, but ends up speaking to his young wife, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) instead. She asks about getting her husband some more life insurance without his knowledge, but Neff immediately smells a rat and backs off. Her feminine wiles are too strong for him, however, and he soon returns. They hatch a plan between them to kill her husband and collect the insurance money. Everything appears to go well, until a colleague of Neff’s, an insurance investigator named Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), gets suspicious and starts to look a little deeper.
This is a proper film noir, with snappy dialogue supplied by Raymond Chandler. It was an enjoyable film, with plenty of suspense and intrigue. Although the quick-fire hard-boiled dialogue, particularly between the two main characters was a little over the top at times. It was so extreme that it almost seemed to be spoofing the film noir genre in places. It left me wondering what the actual motives of the characters was supposed to be. They didn’t seem to need the money, and they didn’t seem to be particularly in love. It’s as if they just did it for the hell of it.
But those are just my thoughts looking back on it. While I was watching it, I didn’t really care about all that too much. I like that sort of quick-witted snappy dialogue, and so it kept me entertained.
Score – 7/10. Perfectly enjoyable, but nothing to write home about.
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