I’ve only seen a couple of his films now, but Billy Wilder is probably one of the best directors who ever lived. He did direct what has recently become my favorite film - Sunset Boulevard - and he also directed the hilarious One, Two, Three, the brilliant Some Like It Hot, and the absolutely wonderful The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon. Since the man had a pretty comprehensive career, spanning from the early 1940’s all the way to the early 1980’s, I thought it would be due time to take a look at some of his other work, including his two early favorites, 1945’s The Lost Weekend, and, of course, 1944’s Double Indemnity. Until recently I hadn’t seen this classic film noir, and it was a delight to finally take a look at it.

It seemed like quite often in film school we would be advised that one of the most famous examples of film noir was Double Indemnity. Don’t look the term up in a book, we’d be told. Just watch Double Indemnity. This is one of the films that started the 40’s trend of film noirs, with movies like Laura, The Big Sleep, and To Have and Have Not (Humphrey Bogart usually being a required ingredient as well). It’s the kind of genre that has always tried to be repeated, as early as this decade with the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There, and, to a certain extent, the recent indie teen film Brick. But it’s really the 40’s and the 50’s that marked the true time for this genre, with John Huston’s 1941 The Maltese Falcon really starting the genre and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil concluding the two decades’ worth of material in 1958. So with viewing Double Indemnity I’m getting a film noir history lesson, a look into Billy Wilder’s first major hit film, and, oh, a really great, entertaining movie. That too, of course.

The new DVD of the film features an introduction by Turner Classic Movies’ very own Robert Osborne, who should really be required to intro pretty much any classic movie. His charm. His grace. His infinite wisdom. We can all learn from him. A great man. Yes. Anyway, then the film began, and I was immediately whisked away into a different time and place, one that I’d like to linger in in a lot more movies to come. Film noir is spectacular (when done right, anyway). The look, the feel. It would’ve been best to see Double Indemnity on a big screen (the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight, perhaps?) to really get the full effect, but it’s still quite outstanding on my little TV in my bedroom. Director Billy Wilder, in one of his first times out, completely understands the film medium through and through, telling the story of an insurance salesman who falls for a wife who wants her husband killed. He tells her of the insurance clause known as double indemnity, in which the insurance company agrees to pay twice the face of the contract in case of an accidental death (in this case, a train crash). But not all happens as planned.

The film is beautifully shot by John F. Seitz, who probably helped define the visual elements of film noir, with one stunning shot after another that helps build up the suspense and promise the bleakness of what we know from the outset will be a downer finale. Wilder would go on to use a similar narrative structure in Sunset Boulevard, with the film opening with a moment from the ending, in which we pretty much know the fate of a particular character. In Double Indemnity, we pretty much know what’s going to happen to one of the main characters, and if you know the elements of film noir, it’s essentially guaranteed. The film is a film noir in every sense, with one of my favorite genre elements, the femme fatale character, and a storyline and characters who scream crime! murder! sexuality! Only the best.

When it was all said and done, I couldn’t say I loved the movie, as it’s a little slow at times, and I didn’t find lead actor Fred MacMurray particularly charismatic, but I enjoyed it when especially paying attention to all the dramatic elements of film noir. The stand-out cast member is for sure the femme fatale, in all her glory, Ms. Barbara Stanwyck, nominated for an Oscar for her performance in this. While she doesn’t match up with some of the classic femme fatales in Alfred Hitchcock’s work, she gives a chilling and memorable performance. Watching Double Indemnity was a lot of fun, and I look forward to watching Billy Wilder’s other 1940’s Oscar-winning film The Lost Weekend in days to come.