November 7, 2021
LIKE ALL GREAT LOVE STORIES:
The Highest Achievement of American Film Noir: Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Robinson at their best in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (David Lehman | November 6, 2021, American Scholar)
3. There are lovely subtleties and secret puns in the screenplay. When Walter first visits the Dietrichson house and is waiting for Phyllis to descend the staircase wearing her alluring anklet, the maid tells him the liquor cabinet is locked, and he replies that he brought his own keys.I think, too, of the movie's last line ("I love you, too") as MacMurray dies in Robinson's arms, a scene that poet Suzanne Lummis beautifully characterizes as "the pietà that closes Double Indemnity, where instead of mother and crucified son it's Boss kneeling by his fallen Star Employee, insurance salesman Walter Neff, blood seeping from his bullet wound. Turns out it was a love story after all--the kind the Greeks called philia."
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2021 6:11 PM