![]() ![]() At the start of the film, Keyes is not only Walter Neff’s coworker and nemesis but his true friend and mentor. I’d argue that the cat and mouse game between Neff and Keyes, not the doomed love affair, provides the key to understanding the film’s power. Neff, an experienced insurance salesman, had long fantasized about how one could successfully pull off such a murder, before his affair with Phyllis gave him the impetus to put his plan into action. Even the extremely perceptive Keyes has to admit that he’s seen a lot of fishy deaths but never one where a man broke his neck by falling off a slowly moving train. Walter Neff, kills the husband and then pretends to be the husband to make a deadly accident seem plausible, pulling off a seemingly perfect murder. Setting the insurance investigator’s acumen aside, the murder is indeed quite clever. Robinson, one of Hollywood’s best character actors of the noir period, plays MacMurray’s insurance company coworker, Barton Keyes, an honest and intelligent claims adjuster, circling in on the adulterous killers as they attempt to claim a fifty thousand-dollar double indemnity insurance payout and avoid the death chamber. Robinson, the theme of redemption comes to the fore. But if we look to the third major star on the film’s bill, Edward G. If one considers the film to be the story of these two lovers, it can seem like just another noir about bad people doing worse things. The film tells the story of an insurance salesman, Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray) and married housewife, Phyllis Dietrichson (played by Barbara Stanwyck) who begin a torrid affair and plan to bump off her husband for the insurance money. ![]() While some might find the doomed romance and brilliant acting to be justification enough for the film’s outsize reputation, I’d argue that the film’s power derives from its message of redemption. Add director Billy Wilder to moodily light and film the hardboiled Los Angeles setting, and the once-in-a-century perfect American cinematic cocktail is all but complete. ![]() Cain source novel is an American classic, and none other than the great Raymond Chandler was hired to help to give it a film treatment. What is the secret to its brilliance? Well, the James M. Double Indemnity often tops the list when it comes to the best noir cinema ever made. ![]()
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