Summary
Now despairing, Walter begins to spend more time with Lola, enjoying her calming presence. One night they walk through the woods behind the Hollywood Bowl, and Lola confides in Walter that she believes her stepmother and Nino Zachetti conspired to kill her father. When Walter asks how she knows, Lola explains that she has followed Nino's car back to Phyllis's house multiple times, and that Nino never showed to pick her up from a UCLA lecture on the night of the murder, saying he was "sick." Walter tells Lola not to imagine such things, but wonders to himself how Nino Zachetti fits into the picture.
At the Pacific All Risk office, Barton tells Walter the Dietrichson case "busted wide open"—they caught Phyllis's accomplice. Barton invites Walter for a celebratory drink, but Walter declines and searches Barton's office for the identity of the apprehended accomplice, thinking Barton may be toying with him. Walter plays back a dictation machine tape, in which Barton advises against placing Walter under surveillance, given his strong alibi and their intimate working relationship. Furthermore, whereas no relationship can be proved between Walter and Phyllis, Barton notes on the tape that Nino Zachetti has been seen visiting Phyllis multiple nights in a row, and that sufficient evidence exists to hand Nino over to the police. Walter calls Phyllis and demands to see her at 11:00 PM that night. He tells her not to worry about Barton and to leave the lights on, and assures her that no one will be watching the house.
Through voice-over, Walter confesses that Phyllis had plans of her own. At the Dietrichson residence, Phyllis unlocks the front door and turns off all the lights, against Walter's instructions. When Walter enters, she is reclining in the dark on a chair, listening to the radio and smoking a cigarette, having stashed a gun nearby. Walter remembers the first time they met in that room, and tells her he came to say goodbye. When she asks where he's going, he tells her he isn't going anywhere—she is. Rather than continue with the plan and ride "to the end of the line," with her, Walter tells her he found another man to ride in his place: Nino Zachetti.
Walter admits that he knows she and Nino have been working together from the start, and that she probably would have schemed against Walter as soon as she received the policy money. He tells Phyllis that Nino Zachetti will be at the Dietrichson residence in 15 minutes, followed closely by the police. Although Phyllis threatens to tell the police everything, Walter doubts they would believe her with Nino now the prime suspect. Phyllis admits that she has manipulated Nino's hot temper in the past by telling him that Lola was seeing other men, implying she could get Nino to kill Lola and even Walter. Walter calls her "rotten" and crosses the room to close the window blinds.
A gunshot suddenly rings out in the dark. Hit in the shoulder, Walter approaches Phyllis, daring her to shoot him again. She hesitates and tells him that she was using him all along and that she never loved him until that precise moment. Walter refuses to believe her, but she asks him to hold her close. Walter says, "Goodbye, baby," and fires two shots into her chest. Walter leaves the house and watches Nino Zachetti approach the front door before hailing his attention. Walter gives Nino a nickel and suggests that he go call Lola from a payphone rather than enter the Dietrichson house. Walter hints to him that he has been deliberately misled about Lola, and that she still loves him.
Later that night, Walter has returned to the Pacific All Risk offices, now back in the same position as he was at the opening of the film, speaking into the dictation machine. He wonders aloud whether Phyllis's body has been found yet, and asks Barton to go easy on Nino, knowing he has been manipulated by Phyllis. Walter finally looks up to see Barton standing in the office, who has been passively watching a sweaty, injured Walter confess for an extended period of time. He explains to Walter that the janitor called and notified him after noticing that Walter was dripping blood.
Walter explains he was "straightening out" the Dietrichson case, and Barton admits that you "can't figure them all." Barton tells Walter he's all washed up, and goes to call for a doctor, but Walter stops him. Walter implores Barton to go back to bed and to give him a head-start so that he can flee for the border. Barton replies sadly that he won't even make it to the elevator, and Walter collapses near the front door of the Pacific All Risk offices. Barton crouches over him and tells him the police are on the way. Walter explains to Barton that he couldn't solve the Dietrichson case because the culprit was "across the desk," and Barton tells him, "Closer than that, Walter." Walter replies, "I love you, too." Walter puts a cigarette in his mouth, and Barton lights it.
Analysis
Throughout the film, Wilder's script stresses the fact that Walter and Phyllis must ride out the consequences of their fatal scheme, "straight to the end of the line," and Walter's final actions in the film amount to a last-ditch effort to "jump" off the proverbial train and avoid this fate. Ironically, the man who is most desperate to solve the case, Barton Keyes, is the man who insulates Walter from suspicion: Walter listens to Barton's dictaphone and hears that he advised the company against placing Walter under surveillance, which would surely have yielded incriminating evidence against him. Walter is surprised to learn that the company has instead nabbed Nino Zachetti as the culprit—Walter's "double" and Phyllis's erstwhile lover.
The literal and figurative tension between light and shadow reemerges in the penultimate scene of the film. Before coming to see her, Walter instructs Phyllis to leave the lights on, but Phyllis deliberately turns all the lights off. The gesture symbolizes Phyllis's desire throughout to conceal her true intentions from not only Walter, but also Nino, Lola, Mr. Dietrichson, and the insurance company employees. Unlike Walter, who seems to express sincere if tenuous love and affection for Barton, Phyllis enjoys no such companionship with anybody, and the image of her smoking a cigarette in the darkness models her utter isolation, depravity, and self-absorption.
After Walter tells Phyllis that the police will soon arrive to apprehend her, she shoots him as he is closing the venetian blinds, an already-established visual symbol for criminality and imprisonment. Intriguingly, she hesitates before shooting him a second time, again foregrounding the significance of the number "two" in a film that has already toyed deliberately with notions of duality, doubleness, and doppelgängers. Whether Phyllis hesitates because she is selfishly frightened or because she genuinely cares for Walter on some level is left ambiguous. The fact that Walter shoots her twice in return when she asks him to hold her close indicates that Walter has fulfilled the fatal consummation of their pairing, and has chosen to mirror Phyllis's own ruthlessness (becoming her "double") rather than display any mercy.
Walter encounters his other double, Nino Zachetti, on his way out of the house. Walter essentially gives Nino the advice which he himself would have benefitted from hearing upon first meeting Phyllis: that she has purposely misled him, and that he should rekindle his romance with Lola. The film counterbalances the theme of feminine evil in the film, personified by the figure of the femme fatale, with genuine moments of male-male bonding and outreach such as this one, in which Walter essentially sees in Nino a younger, more gullible version of himself. Wilder's script reinforces this fact by having Walter include in his dictaphone message a plea to spare Nino from any undue punitive treatment.
The film's final scene addresses the tragic outcome of what is arguably the film's most pivotal relationship: that between Walter Neff and Barton Keyes. That Barton has been listening to Walter confess into the dictaphone from the corner of the room for an unspecified amount of time contributes yet another layer of the irony to the presentation of the narrative: a knowing Barton has been listening to an oblivious Walter relate a confession addressed to an oblivious Barton, symbolizing the shifting frontiers of knowledge and disclosure between the two. Barton's melancholy in the final scene contrasts with his fire-breathing attitude throughout the film, and suggests how resilient his bond with Walter is, despite the criminal disclosure. Wilder captures the resiliency of this male bond in a final, sentimental image, in which Barton lights Walter's cigarette as he lays dying in the Pacific All Risk office.
