Screenshot for the Week of 16 November 2020: "DOUBLE INDEMNITY" (1944)

Using Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and his apartment door, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) shields herself from the prying eyes of Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson)in Double Indemnity (1944).

[SPOILER ALERT!] The plot of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) began life as a real murder plot in Queens New York in 1927.  The case inspired James M. Cain to write a short novel about a psychopathic housewife who lures an insurance salesman into a murder-for-insurance scheme.  They hope to collect, not the face value of the policy, but twice the amount—double indemnity, a freak insurance rider that pays double for deaths by certain freak accidents, accidents so rare they get special scrutiny by insurance investigators. [END SPOILER ALERT!]

It took eight years to bring the novel to the screen.  Time after time, teams of writers had their scripts rejected by the Hays Code office.  It took Billy Wilder and his co-writer, hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler, to successfully translate the "gutter trash" (Chandler's phrase) story to the screen.

Cain watched the movie several times and was quite pleased with the changes Wilder and Chandler had made.  [SPOILER ALERT!] He was particularly impressed with the decision to have the insurance salesman deliver his confession to Keyes by way of a Dictaphone recording rather than by the uncinematic written statement Cain had chosen. [END SPOILER ALERT!] Cain's reaction to the Dictaphone usage: "I would have done it if I had thought of it."

He made a name for himself with his first novella, The Postman Always Rings Twice, published in 1935.  The speed at which Cain goes from the opening sentence to the first torrid brutal sex scene takes the reader's breath away.  Even more violent and racy than Double Indemnity, it took eleven years to get The Postman Always Rings Twice to the screen.

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John Seitz was an accomplished, respected, and ambitious cinematographer.  When he died he had 169 theatrical film credits to his name.  In addition to his film work he held eighteen patents for various photographic processes.  William Randolph Hearst personally selected Seitz to photograph The Patsy (1928), starring his mistress, Marion Davies.  At the time, he was the highest paid cinematographer in Hollywood.

Seitz's credits include the silent classics The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Patsy (1928), plus, interspersed among dozens of other films, he shot a string of Shirley Temple movies, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), Sullivan's Travels (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), and Sunset Blvd. (1950).

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Barbara Stanwyck worked with Billy Wilder three years earlier in Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941).  Wilder had co-written the screenplay.  Both Stanwyck and Wilder earned Oscar nominations for their work.  Neither won.

Lucille Ball was originally hired to play Sourpuss O'Shea.  But when producer Samuel Goldwyn learned Stanwyck was available, he fired Ball and hired Stanwyck.

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Charles Brackett was Wilder's writing partner from 1938 through 1950.  Brackett shared writing credit with Wilder on every one of Wilder's screenplays during that period, with one exception: Double Indemnity, which Brackett quit before the first word was typed because he found the material distasteful.  (Didn't everybody?)

Meanwhile, Brackett went on to write on his own after Sunset Blvd.  Among other projects, he wrote Titanic (1953), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb, and Niagara (1953) starring Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe.

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Billy Wilder only worked with Raymond Chandler once, on Double Indemnity.  They had a rocky relationship, probably because Chandler was a drunk, a mean drunk at that, and was under the influence of alcohol most of the time.  But his way with words, even while drunk, impressed both Wilder and producer Joseph Sistrom.  All of the dialogue changes from the book were more Chandler's than Wilder's.  And when Wilder and Chandler disagreed on just about any other artistic matter, Wilder invariably came to realize that Chandler had been right all along.

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Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray worked together once before, in the romantic-dramedy Remember the Night (1940).  When it had come time for the romantic scenes in that movie, MacMurray had prepared by pacing, crying, and throwing up, unpremeditatedly of course, but in that order.  He was petrified of love scenes.  He prepared for love scenes in Double Indemnity using the same involuntary techniques.  Stanwyck and MacMurray reprised their Double Indemnity roles in 1950 for Lux Radio Theatre.

C: John Seitz  D: Billy Wilder