A Double Shot of Double Indemnity
The Seamy Underside of American Life is Dramatically Revealed
Sep 11, 2009
Noirs had their heyday in the 1940s through the '50s, but their influence continues to be felt in more recent films, such as Chinatown, Pulp Fiction and Body Heat. Characterized by dark, shadowy atmosphere and their exploration of human obsession and fallibility, films noir of yesteryear were shocking for their focus on the dark side of the American dream.
Few were more shocking than Billy Wilder’s 1944 noir masterpiece, “Double Indemnity.”
The story focuses on cynical life insurance salesman, Walter Neff, who has an affair with the wife of one of his customers. Blinded by passion and greed, Neff decides he can dupe the man into signing a fat life insurance policy before killing him. Then he and the wife, Phyllis Deitrichson, can collect the insurance money, and live together, happily ever after.
The Plan Unravels
But Neff’s supposedly perfect murder proves less than flawless. And one critical scene is a major turning point in the story. Neff is visited by the murder victim’s teenaged daughter, Lola, who is also Phyllis’s step-daughter. Lola saw Phyllis trying on a black veil, as if rehearsing for widowhood, days before her father was murdered. Even more damning, Phyllis was nurse to Lola’s late mother, and Lola believes Phyllis is responsible for her death, as well, but no one will listen to her.
Lola arrives at Neff’s office unannounced, and Neff is stunned and worried, especially after she hears what Lola has to say. Lola is, of course, unaware that Neff, in cahoots with her step-mother, was the one who actually strangled her father. In this scene, Lola mistakenly believes she has an ally in Neff. For his part, Neff does his best to discredit Lola’s accusations and suspicions. He worries that Phyllis will be caught for the murder, and he will follow her to the gas chamber.
The Tables Turn
In this scene, we witness the beginning of a major power shift between the two principal characters, Neff and Phyllis, although Phyllis is not in the scene. Up to this point in the story, Neff believed he initiated the affair and masterminded the murder. It begins to occur to him he was wrong.
The scene is particularly pivotal because earlier in the story the director allows the audience to see only one critical piece of information that Neff doesn’t see – the look on Phyllis’s face as Neff strangles her husband. In the murder scene, Phyllis is driving her husband’s car and her husband, Mr. Deitrichson, is sitting in the passenger seat. Neff, who has been hiding in the back seat, lunges and strangles Mr. Deitrichson. The audience hears but does not see the murder. But more chilling still, the camera finds Phyllis’s face, and she’s glowing with satisfaction, barely able to suppress a broad smile.
In a voiceover following the murder sequence, Neff remarks that he was worried that Phyllis might go to pieces once the murder is committed, but she held together like a trouper. Neff’s lack of introspection prevents him from reflecting on Phyllis’s cold, calculated reaction to the killing that was performed just inches away from her.
But in the scene between himself and Lola, Neff finally realizes what the audience has been aware of since the murder – Phyllis is a sociopath, and because of the murder Neff committed, he is inextricably linked to her.
A Moment of Regret -- Too Late
And while Phyllis is deranged, Neff, although tragically flawed, is not. Lola’s presence clearly scares him, but in one telling shot we see Neff gazing at the sobbing Lola, and through his expression we know he is, for a brief moment, he sees the pain and suffering he has caused, and perhaps regrets having hurt an innocent victim. His sense of remorse, however, is short-lived, and his survival instincts return. Neff resumes the cover-up.
In this scene, the blinders are suddenly lifted and Neff realizes he is not the engine behind the plot to kill, embezzle money, and run away with a beautiful woman, but a cog in Phyllis’s machine.
That the scene allows the audience to infer this information without overtly stating it is the mark of this screenplay’s understated brilliance.
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