I really like the work of Billy Wilder, but here’s the thing about the guy: despite the fact he’s known, and rightfully so, known mostly for his comedy work, he did do a few truly impressive dramas. For Wilder, the script was the most important part of filmmaking, and he wrote or co-wrote his films, going so far as to say the proudest moments of his career was when Agatha Christie complimented him for his work on the adaptation of her play Witness for the Prosecution and when novelist James Cain likewise complimented his work adapting his own novel Double Indemnity. Now, I’ve covered Double Indemnity before for the AFI Challenge, so I have already said quite a bit about how this film and how it works when two despicable characters can’t trust each other enough to get away with their evil murder scheme and accompanying insurance fraud.
But then as I watched it again for the Stacker Challenge, something jumped out to me: there’s no sign of law enforcement in this film.
Now, to be fair, the world of Double Indemnity does mention the existence of, well, the law. But there are no cops in the film. Insurance salesman gone bad Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) mentions the gas chamber a couple times, and there’s a chance to go to court, but the idea of simply being arrested never comes up. Furthermore, there are no cops looking into the suspicious death of Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers), a miserable older man who probably won’t be missed much regardless. His bewigged wife Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) had convinced Neff into helping her murder her husband in such a way that she can earn a “double indemnity” or extra large payout due to an accidental death under unusual circumstances. The only person really looking into it is Neff’s friend and co-worker Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson). He’s not a cop. He’s an insurance adjustor.
By the by, Wilder’s only regret that he ever mentioned about Double Indemnity is how bad Stanwyck’s wig looked. The normally brunette Stanwyck needed to go blonde for the role, and rather than dying her hair, they used a wig that Wilder came to dislike four weeks into shooting, far too late to start over, but he ultimately decided the bad wig said a lot about how crass Stanwyck’s Phyllis actually is. That said, Wilder prided himself on, among other things, avoiding typecasting. So, sure, take happy-go-lucky MacMurray and cast him as a sleazy, greedy insurance salesman and “good girl” Stanwyck as a seductive killer. It would be like casting 90s-era Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in those roles. That philosophy served Wilder well throughout his career, and it certainly helped here. Oh, and this was only his third feature film.
However, I did say this is a film devoid of law enforcement. That’s true. I find that interesting on multiple levels. The film suggests that the problem isn’t that a man died and there’s fraud involved but that a dedicated insurance adjuster doesn’t want to pay out a policy because it is a case of suspected fraud, something he has no evidence for but just believes in the depths of his soul. To be fair, Keyes is portrayed as a good man, the voice of the moral right alongside of Phyllis’s stepdaughter Lola (Jean Heather), and Lola is more naive and innocent than moral. For all that Neff talks about going to the gas chamber, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the film to take him there unless he walks in on his own. Even at the film’s end, after Neff has confessed the whole story into a dictaphone and Keyes knows the truth, Keyes doesn’t call the cops to come take Neff away for murder. Instead, he calls an ambulance to take care of Neff’s wounded shoulder, the result of a gunshot from Phyllis in the scene where the pair shoot each other because, gee, untrustworthy murderers can’t even trust each other.
I think I can see why. For all that the 40s were a prime time for Hollywood film noir, this is still a time when the Hays Code decided what could and couldn’t be aired. At that time, criminals were never allowed to prosper. The script, co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, went through eight years worth of revisions before the Hays people gave them the greenlight to actually make the thing. Now, I would hold that’s for the best. There’s no way that these two people should be able to trust each other well enough to get away with what they did. Lola suspects Phyllis in the death of Lola’s mother while Keyes thinks the death of Lola’s father is awfully suspicious. Unless they want to murder a lot more people or, you know, trust each other, then they’re going to have to lose.
But that is the ironic core of this golden age of film noir. The characters may have been universally disreputable at best, but the truly evil ones aren’t allowed to win. I’ve said before many of my favorite films are ones about 70s antiheroes, but the difference is they were allowed to win on occasion. Sure, they may be Pyrrhic victories, but that doesn’t mean they have to go directly to prison or something. Who knows? Maybe that’s why noir such a rarity these days, right alongside the likes of screwball comedy. About the only filmmakers I can name off the top of my head that gets those sorts of genres done right these days may be the Coen Brothers.
So what does it say that it’s corporate policy and not the law that works hardest to bring these two down?
NEXT: How about another noir? There’s another one up next in the countdown. Be back soon for 1949’s The Third Man.
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