Author James M. Cain virtually created a new genre with his extra-tough, sin-blackened, and sex-drenched novels--and they were so successful with the public that not even 1940s Hollywood could resist. The result was three of the most famous films of that decade: MILDRED PIERCE, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, and DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Although POSTMAN is probably the better film, INDEMNITY is the most famous--possibly due to the story's truly psychotic edge, which is given full life by Barbara Stanwyck in one of her most celebrated performances.
Like POSTMAN, INDEMNITY offers the story of a married woman who plots with her lover to murder her husband. Given MacMurray's typically "good guy" image, I didn't expect to believe him in the role of Walter Neff in the role of skirt-hungry Walter Neff--but MacMurray's performance is exceptionally good here, and all the more effective because it so completely unexpected. But while MacMurray has most of the screen time, it is really Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson who dominate the film. Stanwyck is truly memorable here, and gives us a woman who seems at once sexed-up and completely frigid, at once completely natural and absolutely artificial. It is a remarkable and often disturbing effect. Robinson, who endured decades of type-casting, is equally good as the blustery, slightly comic, and absolutely honest insurance man whose job it is to ferret out suspicious claims; it is largely due to his performance, which gives the film a moral center, that we are able to buy into the otherwise off-beat performances that drive the action.
This was one of director Billy Wilder's first major hits, and he deserves considerable credit for making the weird elements of the story work as a whole, keeping the film smartly paced, and heaping it up with atmosphere. So influential that its impact would be difficult to over-estimate, DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a touchstone for the entire film noir genre. Recommended.
Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer
