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Double Indemnity Sponsored by El Paso Times 1944 | G | Crime, Thriller | d. Billy Wilder Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson 65th Anniversary Screening |
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| One of Billy Wilder's early films as a director in America, Double Indemnity would anchor the start of a long and successful career for this writer-turned-director. Wilder was already an accomplished screenwriter in Europe when he immigrated to the US in 1933, and he had steady work in Hollywood into the war years. But it would be the opportunity to combine his writing abilities with a sharp eye for directing that set Wilder on a path to creating some of the most important and sophisticated films in American cinema. In 1944, however, his American career was still just beginning... And what a beginning: Based on a novel by pulp luminary James M. Cain, and with Raymond Chandler assisting Wilder on the screenplay, Double Indemnity would go on to seven Academy Award nominations, marking the arrival of a major new talent (threat) in Hollywood. Now considered a central title of what the French called film noir (films that wandered the darker alleys of human nature). Wilder's film about an amoral insurance salesman who's sucked into a fraud and murder scheme, is among the most uncompromising of early noirs - with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray playing unredeemed co-conspirators. - Charles Horak | ||