Summary
Opening credits roll over the silhouette of a hat-wearing man using crutches to hobble forward. The scene shifts to a street, where a car speeds past two workers next to a sign that reads “Los Angeles Railway Corp. Maintenance Dept.” The car blows through a stop sign and parks in front of a high-rise identified as the Pacific Building. A man exits the car and taps on the glass door. An elderly groundskeeper lets him in, addressing him as Mr. Neff, and takes him to the twelfth floor. He asks Mr. Neff how the “insurance business” is going, and mentions that he was never able to afford life insurance due to his rheumatism. Mr. Neff walks through a set of glass doors that read “Pacific All Risk Insurance Co.,” into a two-story, open floor-plan office suite. Neff ducks into an office on the second level, sits behind the desk, loosens his tie, and uses only one hand to produce and light a cigarette, clearly having sustained an injury of some kind.
Mr. Neff takes out an office dictation machine and begins to speak into it: “Office memorandum, Walter Neff to Barton Keyes, Claims Manager. July 16th, 1938…” Walter supposes out loud that Barton will consider his memorandum a “confession,” and mocks Barton’s reputation as a “wolf” who can sniff out false insurance claims. Walter tells Barton that he apprehended the wrong suspect in the “Dietrichson" claim, though he rightly suspected the accident was a murder. Walter confesses to the murder, and says he did it, “for money and a woman,” but got neither. Pausing to take a drag from his cigarette, Walter explains that the plot began with a routine auto renewal claim the previous May in the Los Feliz district of Glendale, California. He continues to speak in voice-over as the film flashes back to an exterior shot of a bright, sunny road with two children playing baseball in the foreground.
Approaching a grand Spanish-style house, Walter wonders in voice-over whether the owner ever paid it off. Walter rings the bell and asks the housekeeper to speak with Mr. Dietrichson, but she tells him Mr. Dietrichson is out, and is about to turn him away when a woman wrapped in a towel appears on the second-story landing above the foyer. She introduces herself as Mrs. Dietrichson, and Neff identifies himself as a Pacific All Risk insurance salesman inquiring about a policy renewal. He suggestively tells Mrs. Dietrichson he wouldn’t want an accident to occur while she wasn’t “fully covered.” Mrs. Dietrichson agrees, and tells the housekeeper (Nettie) to guide Walter into the living room while she dresses.
In voice-over narration, Walter describes the room’s atmosphere: he remembers smelling cigar smoke and seeing dust motes floating in the bars of light filtering through the venetian blinds. Two picture frames are visible, one of Mr. Dietrichson, and one of his daughter by his first marriage. Walter notices a goldfish bowl but admits he was still thinking of “the dame upstairs and the way she had looked at me.” Mrs. Dietrichson descends the stairs in heels, wearing an anklet, and asks to hear about the policy renewal. As she sits fiddling with her lipstick, Walter tells her about the policy, pausing to complement her anklet. Mrs. Dietrichson asks if Walter handles accident insurance as well as automotive insurance, and he says yes, and then asks her what’s written on her anklet. She says it’s her name—Phyllis. She recommends that he come by the following night when Mr. Dietrichson will be around.
Walter and Phyllis continue to flirt using an extended metaphor about driving. Walter says he likes her name but has to “drive it around the block a few times.” Phyllis tells him, “There’s a speed limit in this state… forty-five miles an hour,” and when Walter asks her how fast he was going, she says “about ninety.” Walter takes the hint and leaves. Musing in voice-over narration on his way back to work, Walter remarks he should have “known” when she mentioned accident insurance, and that he smelled honeysuckle, which he never knew could smell like murder.
At the Pacific All Risk offices, a secretary tells Walter that Barton wants to see him. As Walter enters Barton’s office, Barton is gruffly investigating a man named Gorlopis’s automotive insurance claim concerning a burned truck. Barton tells Gorlopis that phony claims upset the “little man” in his stomach so that he can’t eat. He explains to Gorlopis that investigators found a pile of shavings near the truck, indicating arson. Gorlopis still feebly denies the charge, but signs the waiver Barton puts it front of him anyway and leaves. Barton complains that the company is not adequately vetting insurance claims, affecting their bottom line. Walter teases Barton about his extreme skepticism in all matters, and when Barton grumpily tells him to get out, Walter says, "I love you too." In voice-over, Walter confesses, "I really did, too, you old crab."
Back in his office, Walter receives a message from Phyllis, who now wants to meet on Thursday at 3:30 PM. Although Walter's schedule is full, he decides to meet with her anyway, remembering her alluring anklet. At the Dietrichson residence, Phyllis offers Walter tea, but he asks for beer. She apologetically tells him that she thought Mr. Dietrichson would be home, as he plans to renew the policy. Calling after Nettie, she realizes it is the housekeeper's day off. She makes Walter tea instead, and the two sit closely together on the sofa. Phyllis asks what Walter's commission rate is, and explains that she may have more business for him. Phyllis explains that her husband works in the oil fields, where accidents are not uncommon, and wonders whether she should purchase accident insurance for him. Walter gives her some details, and Phyllis asks whether it would be possible to purchase the policy without Mr. Dietrichson knowing, as he is superstitious about such matters. Walter intuits Phyllis's plan immediately, sensing she wants to kill Mr. Dietrichson and collect on the policy; but when he mentions this out loud, she feigns outrage at the suggestion and tells him to leave.
Analysis
Double Indemnity belongs to the genre of film noir, a term coined by French critic Nino Frank to describe post-World War II American crime dramas with morally-flawed protagonists and strong sexual undercurrents. Billy Wilder establishes the tone of this genre immediately with an ominous, funereal theme that plays over the opening credits. The film's opening image—the silhouette of a man hobbling forward on crutches—exemplifies a number of stylistic and thematic aspects common to film noir: first, it contains an evocative use of shadows, a visual trademark of film noir style; second, it suggests disability and impairment—a motif that could apply not only to Mr. Dietrichson's physical injury, but also to the kind of moral failures that lead Walter Neff to impersonate him in a murder plot. Finally, the shadowy image and accompanying music suggest that the film's plot will involve violent characters and sinister desires, two mainstays of film noir narratives.
The film begins in media res, and Wilder uses environmental storytelling to establish the basics of the plot, with certain key details withheld: for example, a street sign reveals we are in Los Angeles, lettering on the glass doors reads "Pacific All Risk Insurance Co.," and a janitor addresses the protagonist as "Mr. Neff." Walter is clearly injured, though at this point the viewer does not know the context or the cause of the injury. Walter single-handedly lighting his cigarette is the first iteration of a critical gesture that will repeat between various characters throughout the film—indeed, cigarettes and cigars are some of its most pervasive symbols, symbolizing decay, vice, and gratification all at once.
Walter's monologue spoken into the dictation machine becomes a framing device that provides voice-over narration for the entire film, casting an ominous sense of foreboding over the events of the plot as they unfold. Thus, Wilder's film essentially gives the viewer two Walters: the disillusioned Walter who is remembering the events, and the naive Walter who is participating in them. The fact that Walter's confessional monologue is addressed to his co-worker Barton Keyes is another key detail, as Double Indemnity is perhaps in the final estimation a love story between Walter and Barton, rather than Walter and Phyllis: the last words of the film, spoken by Walter to Barton, are, "I love you, too."
Film noir narratives often combine unbridled sexual desire with pathological violence to craft a portrait of urban social deviance, and Double Indemnity is no exception. Wilder emphasizes the attraction between Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson in their first meeting, in which Phyllis is clad in lingerie. The staging of the scene, in which Phyllis stands on the second-story landing and Walter stands in the doorway below, emphasizes the power differential between them, as well as Phyllis's fearlessness in wielding her sexuality like a weapon. Phyllis is a paradigmatic example of what scholars of film noir genre now call the "femme fatale"—a woman who is intelligent, conniving, sexually appealing, and deftly able to coerce and manipulate the male characters around her.
Wilder had Barbara Stanwyck wear a conspicuous, gaudy wig in order to highlight the duplicitous, sleazy nature of her character, who is eventually exposed as the antagonist of the film. Her anklet, over which Walter obsesses, is an early symbol of her avarice and sexual allure, and the object that leads him to meet with her a second time. Rather than seduce or intimidate Walter in a heavy-handed manner, Phyllis merely teases and insinuates, but even her insinuations are transparent to Walter, who, as an insurance policy salesman, is familiar with schemers and grifters. Film noir protagonists are often flawed officials like private detectives or plainclothes cops, but Double Indemnity is unique in that it superimposes the investigative thrust of the film noir genre on to the professional world of insurance claims. Thus, rather than follow a corrupt policeman or a double-dealing P.I., the film follows an insurance salesman tempted into murder and fraud by a female client using her sexuality as leverage.
