September 2006

Double Indemnity

• Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Tom Powers, Porter Hall, Jean Heather
• Directed by: Billy Wilder
• Theatrical release: 1944
• DVD release: 2006
• Video: Fullscreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono
• Released by: Universal

Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?
-- Walter Neff

Los Angeles. July 16, 1938. It’s a dark and rainy night. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) recklessly drives the downtown streets. He struggles up to his office, where we discover that he’s been wounded. He sits down, lights a cigarette, then picks up a Dictaphone and begins to tell the story of how and why he murdered Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers). We flash back . . .

Neff is a fast-talking insurance salesman -- not a bad guy, but no saint. One afternoon, he shows up at the Dietrichsons’ house to renew their auto policy. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the quintessential femme fatale, starts throwing the charm around. She walks down the stairs buttoning her top, slinks across the room, and sits down, swishing a curvy leg with poofy shoes and an ankle bracelet. Neff gets interested. Here’s some of Wilder’s witty script:

Neff: I wish you’d tell me what’s engraved on that anklet.
Phyllis: Just my name.
Neff: As for instance?
Phyllis: Phyllis.
Neff: Phyllis, huh. I think I like that.
Phyllis: But you’re not sure.
Neff: I’d have to drive it around the block a couple of times.
Phyllis: [stands up as if to dismiss him] Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening around 8:30? He’ll be in then.
Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him, weren’t you?
Neff: Yeah, I was. But I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff: 45 miles an hour.
Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I’d say around 90.
Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket?
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time?
Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take?
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles?
Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder?
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder?
Neff: That tears it. [stands up to leave] 8:30 tomorrow evening, then.
Phyllis: That’s what I suggested.
Neff: You’ll be here too?
Phyllis: I guess so. I usually am.
Neff: Same chair, same perfume, same anklet?
Phyllis: I wonder if I know what you mean.
Neff: I wonder if you wonder.

He returns the next night, but there’s no Mr. Dietrichson and no maid. They are alone. Neff sees his chance to score, but Phyllis seems far more interested in casualty insurance. Because her husband works in the dangerous oil business, she’s afraid he might need to be covered. The only hitch is that she wants to purchase the insurance without her husband’s knowledge. Neff immediately figures out that she’s looking to cash in on a death policy.

So begins Double Indemnity, the quintessential film noir.

There are dozens of reasons I wanted to write about this film. Double Indemnity may be the most historically important of all of Billy Wilder’s films, which would be reason enough to include it in "Collector’s Corner." It was MacMurray’s greatest role. The writing team included James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, the crime-writing equivalent of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway -- not only in talent, but right down to their tragic drunken lives. I began writing this piece in 2002, but left it in limbo because the DVD from Image Entertainment was unwatchable. In the meantime, something incredible happened.

My other job is writing about wine. I was at the Aspen Food and Wine Classic, where a friend was leading a seminar on Pinot Noir. One of her guests was Kate MacMurray, spokesperson for MacMurray Ranch Vineyards -- and daughter of Fred MacMurray and actress June Haver. I approached MacMurray to tell her how much I loved her father’s work. She’s about 5’ 10", model-thin, with a huge smile and a radiant face framed by long, curly red hair. She asked me which of her father’s movies I liked. She frequently hears how folks loved My Three Sons, or the Disney films The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor. I told her that I thought Fred MacMurray’s roles in the Billy Wilder films The Apartment, and especially Double Indemnity, were his greatest.

Just then, they called her in for the seminar. She paused, leaned toward me, gently touched my arm, and said softly, "You know, I’ve always dreamed of doing a show with our wine and Double Indemnity and calling it ‘Film Noir and Pinot Noir’." She smiled and ran off. I waited until after the seminar, worked my way through the crowd, and told her the idea interested me, too.

Then she said, "Did you know the movie originally had a different ending?"

To a film lover, that’s like throwing Morris a ball laced with catnip. Did she have the original film stock? "No. Wilder destroyed it," she said. "But I do have a still from the film that shows the original intent."

Warning: I’m about to tell you why Wilder changed the ending. I can’t really give away the ending, because the film begins with the end of the story. Besides, it was a film noir from the 1940s, during the reign of the unlamented Hays Office, which had ruled that any glossy film portrayal of crime had to end with the criminal getting his or her comeuppance -- so we already know that Neff will get it in the end. But if you haven’t seen Double Indemnity, you might want to stop right here and go buy it.

Kate MacMurray told me that the still shows her father in a gas chamber. Originally, Wilder made MacMurray die for his crimes. It was only when Wilder watched the finished product with a preview audience that he noticed that the real love story is not between Phyllis and Neff, but between Neff and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), Neff’s father figure and friend, and the insurance inspector assigned to investigate Mr. Dietrichson’s death. Wilder felt that fate having its revenge on Neff was too easy for the audience. He wanted to leave them with the pain of a real tragedy, so he changed the ending to what we see today, with Keyes showing a father’s disappointment in a failed son. To make sure the audience fully absorbed his meaning, Wilder ended the film with a statement ostensibly sarcastic, but with a powerful piece of truth:

Neff: You know why you couldn’t figure this one, Keyes? I’ll tell ya. ’Cause the guy you were looking for was too close, right across the desk from you.
Keyes: Closer than that, Walter.
Neff: I love you, too.

Universal’s DVD is a huge improvement over the Image Entertainment edition. Not long ago I watched Universal’s most recently struck print of the movie at the Alamo Drafthouse (which Entertainment Weekly calls "The Best Theater in America"), and I can assure you that this DVD gives you a much clearer picture. The noir lighting with its chiaroscurist’s play between gray and grayer is ideally captured, right up at the level of Citizen Kane, the reigning benchmark for quality. Disc 1 also includes a documentary titled Shadows of Suspense that includes a discussion of the original ending and some rich historical background. The film includes a commentary track by film historian Richard Schickel, who knew Wilder and has brilliant insight into his work. Disc 2 features a made-for-TV version with Richard Crenna as Neff, Lee J. Cobb as Keyes, and Samantha Eggar as Phyllis. Its main claim for our attention is to watch Crenna playing Neff, then follow it with a viewing of Body Heat, a remake of Double Indemnity in which Crenna plays the cuckolded husband.

Billy Wilder escaped Nazi Germany at the last second and, despite having a poor grasp of English, worked his way up the Hollywood ladder. He became a scriptwriter, working with his idol, Ernst Lubitsch. (Until his death, Wilder kept a sign on his desk: "What would Lubitsch do?") When he felt other directors were ruining his scripts, he lobbied to follow his friend, Preston Sturges, into directing. Once there, Wilder lived a charmed life, knocking out hit after hit in every imaginable genre: The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot, Sabrina, and on and on.

Wilder is the central character of one of the most famous Hollywood anecdotes, one that involves the demigod producer Louis Mayer. First, understand that in the 1930s and ’40s, the most powerful figure in Hollywood was the producer. Actors and directors had zero pull. Their careers could be ignited or extinguished at a producer’s whim. To this day, when the Academy Award for Best Picture is handed out, it’s the producers who walk onstage to accept it.

Of all producers, none was more feared than Louis Mayer (the second M in MGM). When Wilder released Sunset Boulevard, which trashes the Hollywood establishment, Mayer was overheard at the screening to say, "How dare this young man bite the hand that feeds him?" Wilder overheard him, walked up to Mayer, looked him square in the eye, and said, "Mr. Mayer, I am Mr. Wilder, and go fuck yourself!"

Wilder’s irascibility aside, his fellow moviemakers loved him. At the end of his career, he could look back on 22 nominations for Oscars and seven wins: for writer and director for The Lost Weekend; for writer for Sunset Boulevard; for writer, director, and Best Picture for The Apartment; and the Irving Thalberg award.

Jack Lemmon said, "I’d like to spend the rest of my life doing nothing but Billy Wilder films." Director Cameron Crowe briefly returned to writing to chronicle Wilder’s life in the wonderful book Conversations with Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Robert Strauss, Audrey Hepburn, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Jack Lemmon, Jack Kruschen, Shirley MacLaine, and Walter Matthau all received Oscar nominations for films they made with Wilder. Federico Fellini called him The Maestro.

After years of retirement, Wilder wanted to make one more film. He contacted Steven Spielberg and asked to direct Schindler’s List. The mind reels at how much better that film might have been with Wilder’s lacerating wit and his willingness to make audiences squirm in their seats. Spielberg decided to keep the project for himself.

I asked Kate MacMurray what her father thought of Wilder. "Daddy always said that Wilder was the only director who ever made him act. The roles in My Three Sons and the Disney films, that was just Daddy playing himself. But Double Indemnity and The Apartment, where he played cads, really forced him to act."

With the exception of the audience in Austin who shared our fulfillment of Kate MacMurray’s dream of "Film Noir and Pinot Noir," you are among the first readers to see the original ending. When you look at the two stills, imagine how much easier an ending it would have been -- everything all tidily wrapped up, the bad guy (and the audience) let off the hook because he’s about to receive eye-for-an-eye justice. Notice they even allowed some light into the picture. But Wilder wanted more. He left Neff suffering for having let down his only friend.

That’s the difference between good filmmaking and genius: avoid psychological simplicity whenever you can find psychological complexity, as long as you touch the truth. Next time you watch Double Indemnity, marvel at the gorgeous photography, the acerbic dialogue, the brilliant acting, the fascinating storyline. Then ponder the psychological complexity of a man who could recognize the symbolic power, dredged from the collective unconscious, of sons crushing their fathers’ confidence, all from changing the ending.

Billy Wilder once said, "If people see a picture of mine, and then sit down and talk about it for 15 minutes, that is a very fine reward, I think."

Double Indemnity is worth a good deal more than 15 minutes of talk.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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