August Film Club #2

 Our sixth and final film of our Summer Series is another Billy Wilder film, the excellent Double Indemnity.

Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay from James M. Cain's novel of the same name, which ran as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine in 1936. The film stars an insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who plots with a woman (Barbara Stanwyck) to kill her husband in order to claim a life insurance payment, arousing the suspicion of claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). The title refers to a "double indemnity" clause which doubles life insurance payouts when death occurs in a statistically rare manner.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Widely regarded as a classic, Double Indemnity is often cited as having set the standard for film noir and as one of the greatest films of all time. It currently holds a 97 % fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert awarded 4/4 stars, added it to his list of the Great Movies and said this in his review, "Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” was one of the earlier films noir. The photography by John Seitz helped develop the noir style of sharp-edged shadows and shots, strange angles and lonely Edward Hopper settings. It’s the right fit for the hard urban atmosphere and dialogue created by Cain, Chandler, and the other writers Edmund Wilson called “the boys in the back room.” Few other directors have made so many films that were so taut, savvy, cynical and, in many different ways and tones, funny. “Double Indemnity” was his third film as a director. That early in his career, he was already cocky enough to begin a thriller with the lines, “I killed him for money — and for a woman. I didn’t get the money. And I didn’t get the woman.”

We will be meeting Thursday, August 27 @ 5:30 pm

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKrrAa2o9Eg

Hope to see you there!