150 Word Review: 'Double Indemnity' (1944)
"I wonder if you wonder"
People are rotten, especially the good-looking ones.
And then there's feisty oddball Barton Keyes, claims manager at a major insurance company based in Los Angeles. He's a straight shooter, a real Boy Scout, played by crumple-faced short king Edward G. Robinson, the only man in the city of angels with a conscience. His coworker, Walter Neff, is lanky and louche, an affable enough guy who falls for a dame with a killer idea: help her knock off her husband and then collect the insurance money. The perfect crime, that old game.
The dame? Barbara Stanwyck, a cosmic babe who knows her way around a cold-blooded zinger, and there are plenty. Speaking of, those are written by pulp great Raymond Chandler and Double Indemnity's director Billy Wilder—it's one of the tangiest screenplays ever written. Fred MacMurray played upstanding fellas in his career, but as Neff, he's a bowl of moral Jell-o.
"I killed him for money and for a woman, and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman."
The entirety of noir, summed up in 21 words.
Wonderful script. My only complaint is they should have stopped the repartee at “There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff.”
That line said it all. The following lines spelled it out to the audience unnecessarily.