Rapid Response: Double Indemnity

Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” is one of the finest, earliest examples of American noir films.

Double Indemnity PosterWe’ve grown used to the darkness. We’ve come to expect films to not have everything plainly visible and bright on camera, to see shadows and shades of color and light in the way we experience the world naturally. We’ve also come to see our heroes and our stars to make themselves look ugly, to hide in the shadows, to transform themselves, and to help make our viewing experience something other than natural, something disturbing and unusual.

I’m currently taking a course on Neo-Noir films, and our professor Drew Casper showed us clips of “Double Indemnity”, howling at the film’s introductory shots as he did at how dark they were, how many shadows could be seen on screen, how detailed and rich the sets were, and how much it looked like a film of the German Expressionist period. “This is a Hollywood film,” he screamed. “That’s the star! And his back is to the camera!”

Is it that hard to distance ourselves from the time and era in which we’re watching a movie? Can you imagine anyone watching the opening of “Nightcrawler” (the first week’s screening) and being SHOCKED that when we first see Jake Gyllenhaal’s Louis Bloom his back is to the camera, or that his face is partially darkened in the light?

Old Hollywood though really did have a fetish for making things look gorgeous. Everything was well lit and made to look stunning, even if that meant light came from unnatural places, or even if the scene was dramatic and grim. It took a foreigner like Wilder to break everyone out of the habit. Wilder was hardly the only or the first, and “Double Indemnity” is only a seminal work because it’s one of the finest, earliest examples of the form in American cinema. It holds up wonderfully today, even if its innovations don’t leap out and grab you in the way they once did.

Roger Ebert wrote very plainly in his Great Movies review of “Double Indemnity” that “the enigma that keeps it new, is what these two people really think of one another. They strut through the routine of a noir murder plot, with the tough talk and the cold sex play. But they never seem to really like each other all that much, and they don’t seem that crazy about the money, either. What are they after?”

Barbara Stanwyck

The truth is “Double Indemnity” is a movie about greed, not about love and especially not about the perfect murder or the thrill of the pursuit. And Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson (Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck each at their absolute best) find that greed through sex, wordplay and their own desire for one another, if for no reason other than they’re present. Some of my favorite dialogue turns up as soon as Neff enters the Dietrichson home and catches Phyllis after sunbathing. “It’s two F’s, like in Philadelphia… You know the story. ‘The Philadelphia Story'”.

They’re hopeless and obvious flirts, with Neff in particular going cocky and rogue without hesitation. What’s more, he’s the one who rigs their scheme to the point that it gets them caught. He demands they play it straight, but then he goes for broke by arranging for “Double Indemnity”, not just to dump the body but get double the payment by doing it on a train.

Part of what makes “Double Indemnity” such an effective noir is that the tension is not in the murder itself. We have a lot of movie left once Mr. Dietrichson is dumped on the train tracks. The dogged suspicion of the claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is intense. He blows the movie wide open with a series of reversals that seal the couple’s fate. They don’t crumble under guilt or slip up out of a love for one another. Their greed just gets paid back big time…and double.

Rapid Response: The Caine Mutiny

“The Caine Mutiny” aims to paint a uniquely tragic figure, but even Humphrey Bogart’s great performance falls short.

On paper, “The Caine Mutiny” instantly reminds of “K-19: The Widowmaker” or “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which this movie even slyly alludes to as Humphrey Bogart makes his excellent and provocative introduction as Lt. Cmdr. Queeg. And yet far from a film about revolution, rebellion or loyalties, “The Caine Mutiny” is dedicated to the Navy and those who have suffered great trauma due to the effects of war. It’s a film about paranoia and mental illness, not morals or valor.

And yet working against “The Caine Mutiny” right out of the gate is that we’ve now developed a deeper, more complex understanding of human psychology than this movie has to offer. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well-known term today, and although films like “The Best Days of Our Lives” were peddling it for melodrama earlier than this film, Director Edward Dymtryk tries to make the ruthless perfectionist Captain Queeg into a uniquely tragic figure.

Brought to manage the minesweeper Caine during World War II, Queeg’s new crew quickly suspects that his affinity for seamen with their shirts tucked in or the location of a key have rendered him mentally incapable of helming their ship. Bogart convincingly barks orders and demonstrates fear, and he received an Oscar nomination for the role, but the film neglects informing us what personal war demons he may carry. He’s a flat, silly character, and our only emotional attachment comes in the form of him manipulating steel ball bearings nervously and in Bogart’s magnetic face during one of the film’s few arresting close-ups during its climax.

Some of the performances, including Jose Ferrer’s sarcastic Lt. Greenwald, Fred MacMurray’s lying scumbag of an officer and Van Johnson’s calm, careful first mate help raise the caliber of “The Caine Mutiny,” but too much is wasted on the debut performances of Robert Francis and May Wynn. Their romance is a dud, and his attachment to his mother is a plot line left hanging. It would be less distracting if the on-board events were more compelling, but Queeg’s hunt for a quart of strawberries is the absolute pits if it’s made to be taken seriously, and the resulting courtroom drama leaves little to the imagination on a narrative or visual level.

“The Caine Mutiny” was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor Humphrey Bogart and Best Screenplay, but lost out to “On the Waterfront.” That film depicted what you could call a paranoid character, and it did so with bounds more gravitas than this film unfortunately.

The Apartment (1960)

“And the girl…?”

The romantic comedy changed with those three little words in “The Apartment.” Shirley MacLaine played “the other woman,” the scandalous character who always broke up the true love. But here, she was the lonely girl forgotten by the love of her life, cast out, neglected and contemplating suicide. How did we miss her?

Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” is one of the groundbreaking comedies of all Old Hollywood. It gave the screwball comedy severity. Its characters were lonely, depressed and scummy, and it found a funny color amidst all the blue, proving to be heartwarming and filled with emotional pathos.

Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, an office drone in a movie that would inspire the image of the working man for decades to come. The desks stretching to infinity was inspired by King Vidor’s silent film “The Crowd,” but Wilder’s numerical facts of a singular employee in a massive insurance company seem to paint a broader picture of his workforce servitude.

To move up in the world, Baxter has agreed to a deal with the executives. They can use his apartment as a haven to take their mistresses. The company’s head-honcho, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), promotes Baxter for the same reason, but his mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), the spritely elevator girl with the short haircut Baxter has a crush on.

The interesting thing about Baxter is that he’s living a lie that he’s not actually living. His neighbors and his landlady both think he’s a rambunctious party animal bedding a new girl each night and polishing off several bottles of liquor as well. He does need to wake up and smell the coffee, but for different reasons than his neighbors believe. We see him living completely mundanely, changing the channels on TV in the hopes of watching “Grand Hotel” only to be teased with more commercials. And in the short time he earns these new promotions, he earns none of the extra money, still straining pasta with a tennis racket and washing martini glasses by hand. When he takes another lonely woman home from a bar on Christmas Eve, he’s doing so out of complete depression. He’s like the guy not invited to the party but forced to clean up afterwards. Continue reading “The Apartment (1960)”