- Person
- Billy Wilder
- Lived
- 1906–2002
- Field
- Film
- From
- Austrian-American
The story
James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, serialised in Liberty magazine in 1936, told of an insurance salesman who helps a married woman murder her husband for the payout. Several major studios wanted it, but the Hays Office censor Joseph Breen warned that its sordid tone made it unacceptable for the screen, and for years it was considered unfilmable under Hollywood's Production Code.
In 1943 Paramount bought the rights for $15,000 with Billy Wilder in mind as director. When his usual partner Charles Brackett bowed out, Wilder hired the crime novelist Raymond Chandler as co-writer. Their stormy collaboration produced a script the censors approved with only minor objections, and Wilder later joked that Brackett felt he had cheated on him with Chandler.
Released in 1944, the film starred Fred MacMurray, until then known for amiable, decent characters, as the salesman Walter Neff, with Barbara Stanwyck as the scheming Phyllis Dietrichson and Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes, a claims manager proud of his nose for fraud. The story unfolds in flashback as Neff records his confession, so the audience knows from the start how it will end. Shadowy lighting falling through venetian blinds and the hero's weary voice-over set conventions that later crime films would follow.
Double Indemnity was a major hit and received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Stanwyck, and it brought Wilder his first nomination as a director. It also marked a turning point in the long struggle against Hollywood censorship, showing that adult crime stories could be told on screen. In 1992 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry, and it is regularly ranked among the greatest films ever made.
Together with Wilder's later Sunset Boulevard, it is counted among film noir's defining works. Its confessional narration, morally compromised hero and fatal partnership became a template for crime stories in film and television that is still followed today.
Why it matters
Double Indemnity shaped the look and storytelling of film noir and influenced crime films and television ever since.
About Billy Wilder
Refugee from Nazi Berlin who became Hollywood’s sharpest writer-director, making Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, and winning six competitive Oscars.
More about Billy Wilder
- Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend took addiction seriouslyBilly Wilder's 1945 film The Lost Weekend, a stark portrait of an alcoholic writer, won the Oscar for Best Picture and the top prize at the first Cannes festival.
- Billy Wilder co-wrote the landmark film People on SundayIn 1930 a young Billy Wilder co-wrote People on Sunday, a low-budget film about ordinary Berliners on a day off that became a landmark of realist cinema.
- Billy Wilder stood up for blacklisted colleaguesIn 1947 Billy Wilder joined the Committee for the First Amendment, which defended Hollywood figures targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
- Billy Wilder helped show Germans the truth of the campsIn 1945 Billy Wilder returned to Germany with the US Army's psychological warfare unit and supervised the English version of Death Mills, a film documenting the Nazi camps.
Sources
- Billy Wilder Wikipedia
- Double Indemnity Wikipedia
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