1944: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)

1944: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
What don't I like about this film?  It's one where everything seems to be  in exactly the right place for me.  

If I were making a film noir and putting together a checklist of some of the elements usually associated with this type of film, here's how I would break down Double Indemnity:

1.  Femme fatale: Barbara Stanwyck, perhaps my favorite femme fatale in the history of film.  

2. Voice-over narration:  Like a few of my other favorite voice-overs (Shoot the Piano Player being at the very top of the list), Fred MacMurray's helps tell the story, but even more important, it allows us at times to get into the head of our protagonist.  

3.  Non-linear script:  The movie begins with the end and then tells the entire film in flashback.  Along with Carlito's Way (I've read that Wilder's film was a major influence on De Palma), this is my favorite use of the device in the history of film.

4.  Moody score: Miklos Rozsa immediately thrusts us into this dark world and and then periodically reminds us of the inevitable with one of my favorite scores in the history of this type of film.


5.  Fatalistic ending (SPOILER!): The story, so well-written by the way, takes us where we don't want to go but know we can't avoid.  This movie accomplishes the task as well as any I've ever seen in the history of this type of film.

Other contenders for 1944: It's nice to be back on a year where I don't have quite as many gaps.  The major films from this year I still need to see are: Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale, Raoul Walsh's Uncertain Glory, Marcel Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, and Laurence Olivier's Henry V.  I love Double Indemnity so much that I can't really say any other film is a close runner-up.  However, there are a few other films from this year that I also really like: the two zany Preston Sturges films Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Fritz Lang's wonderful noir The Woman in the Window, one of my favorite films ever dealing with marital paranoia George Cukor's Gaslight, and yet another excellent Howard Hawks entry To Have and Have Not.

9/29/10 I watched Laurence Olivier's Henry V.  No doubt very impressive and ambitious storytelling by Olivier.  But some of the artifice and a movie driven by words are always a little difficult for me so I did not connect entirely with this one.  

10/2/10 I watched Marcel Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis.  Incredibly well-made, ambitious, epic storytelling.  A bit impersonal and tidy for my tastes but a white tablecloth restaurant of the highest order.  

10/3/10 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.  It's tremendous what Hitch is able to accomplish on one location, and the camerawork is subtly and brilliantly employed to emulate a boat adrift at sea.  But a fairly dry affair with only a few moments that really held me.  

10/5/10 I watched Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale.  A rather bizarre concoction.  Powell's style is lyrical and poetic, neorealist and baroque, deep and whimsical.  Some extraordinary moments, such as when the organ player finally has his moment at church, but somewhat meandering too, in a way that can be off-putting at times.  

6/23/11 I watched Leo McCarey's Going My Way.  Likable enough, but a humanistic trudge that's more cloying than affecting.  

9/15/19 I watched Raoul Walsh's Uncertain Glory.  The ending is fairly interesting but the rest of it just felt like Walsh and Flynn going through the motions.

12/15/21 I watched Jean Gremillon's The ciel est a vous.  More than any film I can recall, it explores the settled and normal every day person's desire to chase fame, even at the risk of losing everything in the process.  Gremillion has a keen eye and feel for French provincial which gives the arc of the story real feeling and depth.  

6/9/24 I watched Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet.  A very interesting noir that has the twisty, almost dreamlike, plot typical of Chandler's work.  I'm not all that familiar with Dmytryk but this is a noir that deserves to be talked about in any conversation about the early, important noirs.