I just saw this for the umpteenth time and I have to say, damn! what fabulous film noir. In my opinion, it’s the finest example of the genre, except for maybe “The Maltese Falcon”.
I just heard or read the other day that DI is based on a famous real-life murder case. A quick search on the 'net turns up nothing substantial; has anyone else heard this? If so, what are the gruesome details?
According to Tim Dirks’ website on classic film, filmsite.org, the story is true.
If it weren’t for Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, Barbara Stanwyck would be the classic femme fatale.
I’d agree that it’s second in film noir, but I’d put “The Third Man” first. “The Maltese Falcon” would come in just behind “M” in fourth.
“Double Indemnity” has my favorite dialog of any movie. Nobody outside of a crime novel actually talks this way, but, damn, they should. The first scene in the house reads like a bad imitation of film noir on paper, but it somehow works specatacularly on screen.
You should read the novel.
The movie IS great, but it veered away from the book’s plot in certain areas, especially toward the end…and I think James M. Cain had better ideas for how Neff and Phyllis should end up than the screenwriting team of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did.
Chandler’s great and all, but Cain had a delightfully diseased creative brain…the last few pages of the novel are seriously spooky stuff.
I watched this movie for the first about a month ago. It was good. The script was good and pace and the lighting and everything was good. But I just couldn’t get past the fact that he was the dad on My Three Sons and I could see him as a bad guy.
There is something else in the film that blew me away.
After he first visits her at her home he stops and had a beer. He gets it at a drive-in restaurant and the car hop brings the beer to him so he can drink it right in his car!
Times have changed
Better skip The Caine Mutiny, then…his Lt. Keefer character is a real prick.
I saw the Cain Mutiny a looooong time ago when I was about 8. So I don’t remember. Of course I do remember Bogey and those marbles or ball bearings. I’ll look it up on IMDB.
Zebra, another way to shed your feelings that Fred MacMurray is Mr. Regular Guy Next Door is to see him in “The Apartment”, where he plays an A number 1 first class heel.
Yes, we liked the beer at the drive-in, too. Those were the good old days!
Danimal, thanks for the quote. It sounds like the real-life perpetrators were nowhere near as clever as Neff and Phyllis.
I, too, recently saw DI for the first time. One line confused me. During the first scene in the house, there is a back and forth that goes something like:
Walter: (Introducing himself) Neff with two F’s, like the story.
Phyllis: What story?
Walter: (Surprised) The Philadelphia Story.
I even more recently saw “The Philadelphia Story” and thought that might give me a clue, but it didn’t.
Is this some 1940’s gag about there being two F sounds in the word Philadelphia. It was certainly lost on me.
By the way, two great films.
I love Neff whining about the ritzy folks and “their thirty thousand dollar homes.”
Sir Rhosis
I personally enjoy Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) telling Neff after he turns down a job as an investigator that “I always used to think you were a little bit smarter than the other guys, turns out you were only just a little bit taller.”
Or words to that effect.
Those lines should be my motto since I’m 6’5".
You’ve got it right. It’s a joke about the two f sounds that are really spelled Ph. Neff is an intellectual snob who looks down on all of these people who aren’t as smart as he is, but have more money. It’s probably Neff’s standard intoduction, intended to make fun of those who don’t get the joke.