Blog #5

The article that I found was on the website of Turner Classic Movies. Here is the website I found the article on http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/73500/Double-Indemnity/articles.html.

 

Article Name: “Double Indemnity”

By:  Rob Nixon

The article just summarizes the film and the novel. How Walter went to the Nirdlinger’s house to renew Mr. Nirdlinger’s auto insurance, when he meets Mrs. Nirdlitnger (Phyllis). And how she schedules a time for him to come back to discuss the auto insurance with her husband. But when he does come back, it is just Phyllis in the house. No husband and no maid. Phyllis talks Walter into selling her additional auto insurance. Accident insurance which he husband has no knowledge of. “It's just the first step in their mutual plan to murder Phyllis' husband and collect on a double indemnity clause in the insurance contract”.

“Double Indemnity is one of the high points of 1940s film making”. “Critics have argued whether or not this movie can be considered the first film noir thriller” In my opinion, I’m not sure if it could be considered a thriller. However I do think that this film is film noir. Because of the low key lighting, and how the lighting represents the darkness in both Phyllis and Walter.  

The article also talked about Walter always lit Keyes cigars for him, more of often and more affectionately than he did for Phyllis. But at the end of the movie Keyes lights Walters’s cigar because Walter has been shot.

What I thought was interesting from this article was that Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) told Billy Wilder, the director of the film that she was afraid of the role. Which I thought she played the role pretty well. In the article it explains how “she isn’t someone to turn down a role, for an acting challenge, so she accepted the role and turned it into one of her best”.

They also said in the article that “casting Walter Neff wasn’t so easy”. I thought it was interesting that in the movie the actor who played Walter was married, and there were scenes from the movie, that you could tell he was wearing a wedding ring.