The early hours of the Los Angeles streets are silent, but one car is speeding through the empty streets. The thick fog hangs low over the road, where the only illumination is the line of street lamps that stretch for eternity. We see a tall shadow emerge from the car. His hat low, and his hands clutching tightly to an overcoat wrapped around him. After being let in by a janitor and riding an elevator up to his office, the lonely fellow tries to make conversation; but the man has little interest. He exits the elevator, onto a terrace overlooking an empty stretch of office desks below. It is where we get the first glimpse of the man, in the fashion of German expressionism. Walter Neff, lumbers his way into his office as his shadow lurches over him intently. As he enters, it’s time to make the confession. A confession to a murder.
Double Indemnity will always rank among the favorites. It’s stylish, tightly written, and still a web of mystery. Everytime, the viewing is new. I could never do the film’s description justice. Film noirs, were all the rage. It was an increasingly popular form of filmmaking. The use of shadows, the femme fatale, and the broken hero. This film utilizes almost every technique and manages to get away with it, unlike the murder within. Directed by my personal favorite director Billy Wilder, it’s given a whole new idea as to how to get away with murder 101. He’s always known to write a charismatic tale with a devilish undertone lurking.
Of course, when you have not only an ensemble cast. You also happen to receive the men behind it all. Raymond Chandler, the famous pulp writer for the Philip Marlowe detective novels helped Wilder write the script. Both of which are stellar writers, and when the two unite it’s an unstoppable force of banter and engaging descriptions. The cast itself brings new life, you feel for the characters. They’re all human, it’s what makes them exceed the span of time. These people aren’t indestructible cowboys. Men and women, who are beaten down with little hope of escape. An endless web of violence.
The 40s saw the birth of one of my all time favorite genres. With films such as The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and even The Third Man. These films follow certain patterns, to which of course many famous films have garnered a noir like quality to them. Most famously, Casablanca and Citizen Kane. Though what has Double Indemnity stand above all, is not only how it gave the decades films one of the defining mysteries of that era, but meanwhile reinventing the genre. It gave birth to some of the most famous recipes to create a perfect noir. And that’s what this is! The perfect noir. Double Indemnity has often received plenty of revisitations by me. I’ve watched it countlessly, and remains a part of some of my favorite films of all time! The film itself has inspired me in certain ways, with it’s techniques of shadows casting across a room, to even the brooding characters it provides. This is the perfect example, that there are no clean getaways.
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