Double Indemnity

BFI Film Classics

by Richard Schickel

This book discusses Double Indemnity and its status as a key film in the definition of film noir.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Mystery, Noir

72 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1992

About the author

Richard Schickel is an important American film historian, journalist, author, filmmaker, screenwriter, documentarian, and film and literary critic.

Mr. Schickel is featured in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In this 2009 documentary film he discusses early film critics in the 1960s, and how he and other young critics, rejected the moralizing opposition of Bosley Crowther of The New York Times who had railed against violent movies such as Bonnie and Clyde.

In addition to film, Schickel has also critiqued and documented cartoons, particularly Peanuts.

Schickel was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964. He has also lectured at Yale University and University of Southern California's School of Film and Television.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

NEFF
I wish you'd tell me what's engraved
on that anklet.

PHYLLIS
Just my name.

NEFF
As for instance?

PHYLLIS
Phyllis.

NEFF
Phyllis. I think I like that.

PHYLLIS
But you're not sure?

NEFF
I'd have to drive it around the block
a couple of times.

PHYLLIS
There's a speed limit in this state,
Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.

NEFF
How fast was I going, officer?

PHYLLIS
I'd say about ninety.

NEFF
Suppose you get down off your
motorcycle and give me a ticket.

PHYLLIS
Suppose I let you off with a warning
this time.

NEFF
Suppose it doesn't take.

PHYLLIS
Suppose I have to whack you over the
knuckles.

NEFF
Suppose I bust out crying and put my
head on your shoulder.


This itty bitty 69 page book explains how Billy Wilder hired Raymond Chandler to co-write the script which took James M Cain’s magazine serial and blowtorched it into something delicate, delicious and dangerous. It wasn’t an easy process:

One day Chandler did not appear for work. Instead he delivered an ultimatum scribbled on a yellow legal pad. It was a list of Wilder’s offences against decorum, and the novelist demanded that the director forswear all of them, including peremptory demands unaccompanied by the word “please”, that Chandler close an open door or adjust the Venetian blinds

Chandler’s final assessment of his gig with Billy :

[It was] an agonizing experience, and has probably shortened my life, but I learned from it as much about screen writing as I am capable, which is not much.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amo demais essa série da BFI Classics que são livros curtinhos (ou ensaios de fôlego) sobre filmes emblemáticos e dá para encontrar dezenas deles na Internet, por mim sempre leria acompanhado de seu respectivo filme, isto é, se desse tempo.
Esse do Schickel sobre Pacto de Sangue é bem suculento tanto para mostrar o processo de criação nos bastidores, a transferência de mídia literária para cinematográfica e o que afinal vemos na tela, por ser um livro curtinho acho que o autor manejou bem abordar o filme de vários ângulos.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I used to know someone who taught film studies and specialised in film noir who said he had seen Double Indemnity so many times he could no longer physically watch it. I didn’t think to ask what happened, whether he broke out in a cold sweat and fled the theatre screaming...which would have been disconcerting for his students. But all courses on film noir will show Double Indemnity, all essays on film noir will mention it. If you list the attributes of film noir Double Indemnity will tick the most boxes. Yet, although I think it is a good film and although I love film noir, I’m not fully convinced by the film’s reputation. It has a wonderfully witty and well constructed script and it is a deeply efficient movie, but it hasn’t the sense of noir delirium that I treasure: in some ways I find Double Indemnity a very staid film. One of the reasons for my reading Richard Schickel’s essay was to find out what I might have overlooked, reasons to return to the film again with new expectations. Sadly, Schickel didn’t provide this. The focus of the essay is on the transition of James M. Cain’s book into Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s witty and well constructed script and the resulting efficient movie: Schickel’s obvious love for the film is based on those aspects I recognise, but don’t think are enough to give it the status of a major work. Schnickel doesn’t really go into the murky business of film noir. Towards the beginning of the essay he notes the noir style, but hasn’t much to say about it, treating the pictorial quality of the film as a sort of decoration: those of us who think the essence of noir is found in the visual delirium, not the hard boiled dialogue, this is unsatisfactory. Schickel notes that Barbara Stanwyck’s character created the noir archetype of the femme fatale (although this is a dubious contention), but doesn’t consider any of the implications of this archetype. The femme fatale was both an attractively independent and strong woman and a projection of male paranoid misogyny: one of the fascinations of many noir is the way they work through the contending images. However, I find the femme fatale in Double Indemnity, despite Stanwyck’s charisma, to be fairly straightforward: she is little more than a murderous woman: Schickel doesn’t seem to notice the misogyny entailed in the character...or he takes it for granted and thinks it is part of the film’s fun. The essay certainly contains interesting things, especially about the evolution of the script, but overall I found it superficial: to keep telling the reader that a film is wonderful is not the same as showing why it is so.

[Christopher Renberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good concise read about a great film. The author shares behind the scenes tidbits and machinations but it doesn't go all out, so I prefer this series of books.
I enjoy the film and further enjoy reading a little about it. Having grown up on the Disney Fred MacMurray it was indeed a master stroke to cast him.
Check out the film and/or book and then read this.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely essay on one of my favorite films.

[Yannick Belzil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Du bon background sur le livre original et quelques bons détails de production, mais sans plus.

[Joshua G · Rating 4 out of 5]

A in-depth account and analysis of one of the greatest noirs of all time

[Cyrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

i had to read this for one of my film classes, and honestly this was super fascinating, i love movie deep dives.

[Nathan Marone]

Double Indemnity is the quintessential noir. Schickel's book on it might be the quintessential production history as analysis.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Schickel's approach here is largely to address Double Indemnity as the adaptation of a novel, and to compare and contrast film and book, which is an OK if not very original perspective to adopt, but loses any potential interest when the two works are not granted an even-handed approach. Schickel confers Wilder with apparent infallibility, excepting one moment where he oddly dismisses Wilder's high opinion of the original ending, privileging his own judgement despite having never seen the footage in question. He mentions in the acknowledgments a recent (1991, vs. a 1992 publication date) interview he conducted with Wilder as the primary source of the director's quotations included here, but it almost would have been unnecessary to disclose this. There's a fawning, ingratiating quality to the author's treatment of Wilder, as if hoping the director will read it and perhaps think fondly of the critic as a friend; there's a particularly uncomfortable moment toward the end where Schickel recounts a petty revenge taken by Wilder, clearly expecting us to be as charmed by and approving of it as he is.

Meanwhile, Schickel seems almost entirely dismissive tone toward the pulp fiction that inspired film noir, striking the very type of snobbish pose that led the books and the movies they influenced to have to fight an uphill battle for so long (Schickel's dismissive even of some of the respected adaptations as well, for example, The Postman Always Rings Twice). He's more than happy to highlight what he perceives, sometimes rightly, as flaws in Cain's novel while downplaying or eliding several instances of the book's better handling of the material (most notably the less prominent Keyes character, rendering the book a far less moralistic work; Schickel notes this but never allows for the very real likelihood that this change, while it allowed for one of the great Edward G. Robinson performances, also very seriously softened the tone of the film).

In part, this may be the result of a relative discomfort on Schickel's part with literature; only occasionally does he acknowledge the very different needs being served by each medium and the implicit fact that what works will necessarily not map congruently to the other. Beyond this shortcoming, he also devotes time to some inexcusable and unfounded personal speculation regarding Raymond Chandler's personal habits that were profoundly unbecoming and disturbing to read; it's as if, having placed Wilder into the hero role of his narrative, Schickel felt compelled to render Chandler an equally poorly-shaded villain opposite, even going so far as to discredit Chandler's firsthand accounts of events out of hand. (Schickel's questionable method of selectively validating such accounts recurs when in his eagerness to support his thesis, he grants perhaps too much credence to what may well be genteel self-effacement on Cain's part.) It's too bad Schickel couldn't have stuck more to the facts of the case, as those provided the most fascinating bits of information here: the exchange of letters between Chandler and Cain, the fact that Camus's The Stranger was inspired by Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, and the anecdote about the use of aluminum filings for a more visually striking approximation of dust.

[Richard Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The conventional wisdom is that James M. Cain’s ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ is his greatest novel (pub. 1934) but ‘Double Indemnity’ is the classic movie adaption of his work (rel. 1949).

This is probably true, as far as it goes, but the assessment is repeated so often that it risks overlooking ‘Mildred Pierce’ and completely underestimating both the (minor) classic qualities of ‘The Postman’ on film (rel. 1946) and, more importantly, ‘Double Indemnity’ in print (pub. 1936). This book on Billy Wilder’s film noir adaption falls into this trap.

There are times when the author Richard Schickel implies that the film’s source material was a little sub-standard; that is until the screenwriter – Raymond Chandler – got his expert hands on it. This is absolute nonsense and spoils what is otherwise an excellent and concise account.

According to Susan Hayward (‘Cinema Studies’, pub. 2000), “critical literature on literary adaptations is somewhat thin”. This is a shame because it is a fascinating area of exploration, particularly in the area of ‘hard boiled’ crime fiction and film noir thrillers.

Despite its shortcomings, Schickel’s book is worth reading.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This analysis is strongest on the literary roots of film noir and the creation of the Double Indemnity screenplay by writer-director Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, based on the novel by James M. Cain.

The film, an undeniable classic, feels good, rather than truly great. Almost every noir motif this film consolidated is realized with more dynamism, gusto and perversity in a later film noir. A Hollywood studio decorousness and classical harmoniousness overlays this story of lust, greed, murder and betrayal. Director Billy Wilder was always better at scripting and performance than movement and visual style. To create a mad world you need a mad director--like Orson Welles or Robert Aldrich.

Amongst the BFI Film Classics series, this one belongs in the upper half but not the top tier. If you have to see only one film noir, watch "Out of the Past." If you have to read one book on film noir this isn't the one.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writers for the BFI Films Classics Series have considerable latitude in their approaches. Richard Schickel wants to figure out why this movie is so damn good, and he focuses on the screenwriting process in which two rather incompatible characters - Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder - essentially created the noir template. Many of the best elements of the film - including the crackling dialogue between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and the "love" story between MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson - were created for the film. I have just seen the movie and read the James M. Cain novella, so I can say that Schickel's musings were accurate, insightful and highly readable. However, I didn't walk away with anything that greatly changed my perspective on the film.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to review a book that's just one big review itself. The BFI books can be a fun examination of one film or a dry academic rambling that sucks the fun of the movie. This one was good but Schickel focuses more the history of the movie than the movie itself. That's interesting but since it's only 68 pages, he could've dug a little deeper. If you like the movie, you like this book. Enough said.

[Zoe]

“It takes time, a certain rootedness in tradition, to cook well, and restless Southern Californians, constantly on the move but actually going nowhere, didn't make that sort of commitment to this or any other cultural enterprise that required a long attention span. They invented drive-ins instead.” -p.30

——————

6.5/10.

[foundfoundfound · Rating 3 out of 5]

a straightforward exposition of the film, and its production, in standard slipshod magazine boilerplate prose.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Research for my Noirvember Film Noir Festival at the Severna Park Library