'You can't figure them all'
#26 - 'Double Indemnity'
Film noir is notoriously difficult to pin down definitionally. Indeed, whether it is even a genre unto itself as opposed to a veneer applied to almost any type of cinema is a source of debate.
Either way, it is a whole vibe, as the kids would say1. And as film noir vibes go, Double Indemnity is one of the ultimate examples from the era most associated with this type of film. Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff lights matches over and over and over again simply by snapping his fingers. He rat-a-tat-tats the word “baby” from the moment he first meets Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson. He wants to fuck, oozing sexual desire out of every pore, whether he’s hawking insurance premiums or, you know, actually propositioning her.
“I suppose you’ll call this a confession,” he says, right at the start of the film, following it shortly thereafter with what he’s hoping will pass for one.
“I killed him for money and a woman,” he says.
He gets neither.
What’s more noir than that, for god’s sake? If you saw this sort of thing as a parody on The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live, you’d roll your eyes.
Wikipedia tells us that one of the primary hallmarks of film noir is an emphasis on “cynical attitudes and motivations.” The surface-level story is, of course, laced with extreme cynicism. What other way is there to describe a plot between an unhappy wife and her lover to kill her husband and collect a massive insurance settlement - a settlement fraudulently underwritten by said lover?
These illicit story beats are what draw us to film noir. Most of us don’t lead lives this interesting, but it is thrilling to interlope for a few minutes. The femme fatale, the husband with an Oedipal relationship with his daughter who kind of deserves what’s coming, the brisk, snappy dialogue contrasted by methodical, dream-like voiceover - it’s all there.
What makes this one stick to your ribs is the unsolved mystery around those “cynical attitudes and motivations.” Early on in the film, as I scribbled down notes, I wrote that “the mystery is what turn of events turns Neff.” He is so breezily confident when he first meets Phyllis. It’s not that she is not beautiful, it’s just that Neff seems successful and comfortable - like he could pull many a Phyllis around the Hollywood Hills. Later, I apparently changed my mind, writing that, “actually, the story is how it unravels after they clear all of the obvious obstacles.”
Narration is a staple of film noir - especially from this era - and, thinking on it a few days later, this confusion seems like it stems from an unreliable narrator.
How much of what Neff recounts are we supposed to take at face value? He is combative from the start. His supposed “confession,” remember, is addressed to Edward G. Robinson’s Keyes, an apparent mentor and also an exacting claims investigator who represents the principal obstacle to he and Phyllis getting away with their conspiracy. You start to think this way and you wonder what else might be an exaggeration if not pure fabrication. Does his wham-bam charming of Phyllis and all those matches struck between his thumb and index finger really ring true of a door-to-door insurance salesman? Isn’t there an emptiness to his relationship with Phyllis from the very beginning? And what about his all-too-eager contribution to the conspiracy? The femme fatale is supposed to drive the plot they are hatching, but Neff is at least an equal partner - someone who takes Phyllis’ aimless desire to get out of her marriage and really runs with it.
Film noir: it is, indeed, a whole vibe. What director Billy Wilder and screenwriters Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain drive home in Double Indemnity is just who is architecting that mood.
Neff has cynical attitudes and motivations, to be sure, and his extend well beyond the murder-fraud plot. Neff is only recounting the sordid affair to us as some sort of justification for his actions - and the justification itself doesn’t amount to a criminal defense so much as it does an explanation to Keyes about how he got caught up in this mess. It’s more about how he wound up getting caught by his incisive friend than it is a lamentation for him losing his way.
And perhaps that’s where the cynicism runs out - right at the end as Neff and Keyes both acknowledge their closeness. At some point in the early stages of the film, we learn that Neff has turned down a job with his friend as a claims investigator, sticking to his sales job despite possessing enough skill to at least apprentice under Keyes, if not become his peer. This only takes on real meaning with Neff’s closing line, directed to Keyes: “I love you, too.”
The star-crossed romance here is, ahem, more of a bromance. Neff’s self-destruction wasn’t set in motion the moment he met Phyllis Dietrichson. It began before, when, through foolish pride or boredom or emotional immaturity or something else, he turned down his friend.
It’s entirely possible that the kids do not say this any longer. I’m nearly 40.