Double Idemnity

Double Idemnity is an Amerian film noir.
It was co-written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler and was directed by Billy Wilder in 1944.
 The film was based on a series written by James M. Cain  in 'Liberty magazine' in 1935. Double idemnity is what happens in some life insurance policies that pays double the payout when someones death was caused by an accident.

The main actors and actresses in the film are Fred MacMurray who plays the insurance salesman, Edward G. Robinson who plays a claims adjuster who finds phony claims as a living and Barbara Stanwyck who plays a provocative wife who wants her husband dead.


The film seems to be shot in a way where the audience feels as if they are actually there seeing it all happen and I think this is really inspirational and it reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock.
 

Plot

An insurance salesman for Pacific All Risk called Walter Neff comes back to his office in Los Angeles at night at the start of the film. He is in pain, sits at his desk and starts to saying a memo into a dictaphone machiene for his colleague Barton Keyes. This dictation is what starts the film which is a flashback of what happened to Walter.

During a routine house call to renew an automobile insurance policy for her husband, Neff meets Phyllis Dietrichson. He is very attracted to her and they become flirtatious to one another until he become worried when she asks if it was possible to take out a policy on her husband's life without him finding out. This is when he realises that she is contemplating whether to murder her husband and he doesn't want to be involved in it at all.

Phyllis follows him to his house and starts flirting with him a lot more.
Even though Neff told himself he doesn't want any part in this murder, her flirtation and his gullibility gives in and he agrees to kill her husband with her.
As he knows a lot about how they could trick the insurance company, he creates a plan in which her husband will die a very unlikely death in which he will fall from a moving train.

As this death would be seen as an "accident" this will trigger the 'double indemnity' part of the policy, which will cause the insurance company to pay Phyllis twice the normal amount of money.
They carry out the murder and no one suspects that his death was fowl play.


Neff's colleage Barton Keyes believes at first that her husband died of accidental causes but the "little man" inside him keeps telling him that something is wrong. He then believes that his wife and an unknown accomplice are behind the husband's death. Even though he knows Neff very well and is his colleage, he never suspects that Neff could have anything to do with this. Barton Keyes is not the only thing that Neff should be worried about.

Phyllis's step daughter Lola (Jean Heather) tells him that she is convinced that Phyllis has something to do with her father's death and that her mother died of simular, suspicious circumstances while Phyllis was nursing her. Even though Neff is concerned that Lola could blow his cover if she finds out, he is also worried about what might happen to her as she is a threat to Phyllis and as both her parents have been murdered.


He then finds out that Phyllis is actually seeing Lola's boyfriend called Nino behind him and Lola's back. Her unfaithfulness to him helps him realise how much of a monster she really is and how important it is for him to save himself from his involvement with her and the murder.
He comes up with a plan to make the police believe that Phyllis and Nino actually carried out the murder of Lola's father which is actually what investigator Keyes believes now anyway.

Neff meets Phyllis at her house and she admits to him that the reason she was seeing Nino was so that she could provoke him into killing suspicious Lola in jealous anger. Neff is now completely disgusted and as he is about to kill her she shoots him. As he stands there wounded, he starts to walk towards her telling her to shoot him again. She can't pull the trigger and he then takes the gun off her.

Phyllis then tells him she was never in love with him "until a minute ago, when i couldn't fire that second shot."
He tells her that he doesn't believe her and pulls away from her as she tries to hug him. He presses the gun against her side as she looks pleadingly at him and he says, "goodbye baby" and shoots her twice and kills her.

Neff then hides outside and walks up to Nino as he walks over to the house to visit his lover.
He advises him to not go into the house and to leave and contact, "the woman who truly loves you."
He agrees and walks away avioding what could of been strong evidence against him that he had murdered Phyllis if he had gone in the house. Neff, who has grave injuries, drives to his office and sits at the dictaphone to explain all that has happened.
 
Keyes arrives in the middle of the confession and has heard enough to understand everything.
Neff then tells Keyes that he is moving to Mexico rather than facing a death sentence, but it is too late for him as he falls to the floor before he can reach the elevator.


Key Features 

• The narration is in first person throughtout the film. It starts as a man talks into a voice recorder as he confesses what has happened. The film is basically his confession as he is talking into the voice recorder.
• Every character smokes which is very typically film noir.
• The characters costumes are very film noir as the men are dressed smartly in suits and hats, the women wear little dresses and high heels.
• Light is very limited in a lot of the film. In some parts there are street lamps to cause deep shadows and sometimes show the characters as silhouettes. At some other parts of the film there is parts where light is coming from blinds so that the light is in stripes which is very mysterious and interesting.