9:30pm PST – Double Indemnity (1944) – An insurance salesman gets seduced into plotting a client’s death. Cast: Porter Hall , Fred MacMurray , Edward G. Robinson , Barbara Stanwyck Dir: Billy Wilder BW-108 mins, TV-PG
Generally, these daily recommendations won’t include the obvious. You don’t need anyone to tell you to watch Casablanca or Ben-Hur or Double Indemnity. It’s just that when it comes to Barbara Stanwyck my self-control wavers slightly. My wife thinks I obsess over Stanwyck, which is silly. The nearly completed time machine is only so we can be friends. Then of course I’ll kill Hitler.
Double Indemnity is based on a novel by James M. Cain, who’s also responsible for the films Mildred Pierce in 1945 and The Postman Always Rings Twice in ’46. Between the three there are more unexpected, yet credible plot turns than you will see in all of 2009. The books were loaded with sex and didn’t always meet other production code standards, but all three were brilliantly adapted for the screen and the first, today’s pick, is the best of an elite trio.
Stanwyck plays Phyllis Dietrichson, a young woman married to a wealthy, older man. Fred MacMurray is Walter Neff, the sap who shows up to sell insurance but ends up selling his soul to get a closer look at an ankle bracelet. There’s hot, steamy, adulterous sex in the subtext and the planning of a nearly perfect murder. Unfortunately, there’s also Barton Keyes, Neff’s boss, played beautifully by Edward G. Robinson, who has a ‘little man’ capable of smelling most any rat.
Give it a try, but I lost track of the plot twists after 14. It’s amazing to watch how the smallest of plot details pays off later in the largest of ways. And the dialogue is second-to-none. Blunt and bruising, but that’s what you get when you bring on Raymond Chandler to help write the script.
Watch Stanwyck and Robinson. Two extraordinary actors, not just at the top of their game, but the art of acting as a whole. Did you know neither won a performance Academy Award? But George Clooney has. Where’s your god now? MacMurray’s just as good, however, playing a guy not half as smart as he thinks he is. Of course, neither are we. The beauty of Double Indemnity is that every single bit of the real story happens off-screen.
I’d write about the two other films MacMurray and Stanwyck made together, but Fed-X is here with the flux capacitor.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.