Double Indemnity uses the film noir staple of flashbacks to investigate why Neff – established in the first flashback scene as a cad who has no qualms about aggressively pursuing a woman he finds attractive – commits murder after being beguiled by the victim’s wife. Where most movies end, this one starts, because the real entertainment will not be finding out whodunit, but in discovering how we got here. We’re immediately shown the resolution of a murder mystery. The film begins with Neff, weak from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, making a late night confession on his boss’s Dictaphone about his role in the murder of Phyllis Deitrichson’s husband. What shoots Double Indemnity into the rarefied air of “ridiculously good”? Its structure, for starters. Think Casablanca, Vertigo, Sunset Boulevard. It reaches a level of quality that is so hard to achieve, the artists responsible have no right to expect such an outcome.
#SOUND DOUBLE INDEMNITY ANALYSIS MOVIE#
See it if you care about watching the best cinema has to offer, or if you just love being entertained.ĭouble Indemnity is one of those movies I like to call “ridiculously good.” That phrase suggests a movie almost perfect in every way.
The story of Walter Neff ( Fred MacMurray), the libidinous insurance salesman who gets in over his head when he meets Phyllis Deitrichson ( Barbara Stanwyck), is masterfully executed by director Billy Wilder. At almost three-quarters of a century old, the film is still gripping.
I was able to see it in a theatrical exhibition thanks to Turner Classic Movies’ celebration of the film noir genre, called Summer of Darkness.
I needed to do it because Double Indemnity is a movie that demands to be discussed. When I sat down to type, I wondered what I could hope to write that hasn’t already been written about this Oscar nominated classic one of the most thrilling films noir ever made. So, it certainly isn’t in danger of being forgotten. It was selected in 1992 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, and ranked in the top 50 of the best American films by the American Film Institute. True, it’s a movie already eloquently written about by the likes of Roger Ebert, among many others.
0 kommentar(er)
