Double Indemnity Literary Elements

Billy Wilder

Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck

Edward G. Robinson

Film Noir

English

7 Academy Award Nominations

July 3rd, 1944

Joseph Sistrom

Los Angeles, 1938

Walter is the narrator of the story, speaking into a dictaphone that provides voice-over commentary throughout the film, which unfolds in a flashback structure. The film begins and ends with Walter leaving a dictaphone message for Barton Keyes in the Pacific All Risk offices.

In keeping with film noir genre, the tone of the movie is dark, sinister, and full of menace. Wilder immediately establishes the mood with a thundering, brass heavy score that thuds over the foreboding image of a man on crutches hobbling forward during the opening credits. If Walter's introduction establishes the hard-boiled, moody tone of the film, then Phyllis's introduction establishes the highly sexual nature of the plot, as she appears in a bathrobe in her first scene.

Protagonist: Walter Neff; Antagonist: Phyllis Dietrichson

The major conflict in the film is the slowly-emerging one between Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson, who begin as lovers, then become rivals, then finally each other's murderers. Phyllis is reckless and impulsive, where Walter is passive and pliable. Together they form a destructive, codependent relationship that leads to the murder of Mr. Dietrichson.

The climax of the film is the murder sequence on the train from Glendale to Palo Alto, in which Walter breaks Mr. Dietrichson's neck and then impersonates him as a passenger. After this event, the film consists of falling action, where Barton Keyes and the rest of the Pacific All Risk Insurance employees attempt to unravel the mysterious circumstances of the murder. The scheme eventually falls apart when Walter learns that Phyllis has also been manipulating Nino Zachetti.

Walter states early on, speaking into the dictaphone, that he didn't get the "money or the girl," cluing the audience into the fact that this will be a tragic narrative. Walter's voice-over narration provides several hints about the direction that the plot will take. After his first meeting with Phyllis, he remarks, "I never knew honeysuckle could smell like murder," suggesting that the first encounter has already planted the seed within him to become Phyllis's collaborator.

In his opening monologue into the dictaphone, Walter says Barton Keyes made "just one tiny little mistake," with the Dietrichson case—he fingered the wrong culprit. The understatement is an ironic reflection of the fact that Barton is usually a crackerjack claims investigator, able to ferret out fraud and malfeasance at every turn.

Novel for its time, the film's cinematography uses a low-key, high contrast style of lighting that makes heavy use of venetian blinds. Light filtering through blinds creates striped bars of light that cast across the character's faces, often resembling jail cell bars or a prisoner's uniform, reflecting the fact that the film's characters are of a criminal nature.

The film's plot alludes to the real life story of Ruth Wilson and her lover, who took out an accident insurance policy with a double indemnity clause before conspiring to kill Wilson's husband. James M. Cain, author of Double Indemnity, was a journalist who covered the trial, in which Wilson and her lover turned on each other and tried to implicate the other person. Both were sentenced to death.

One major paradox in the film is that Walter Neff is both the most intimate confidant of Barton Keyes—Pacific All Risk's most aggressive claims investigator—as well as the most brazen criminal ever to try to deceive him. Thus, Walter is both simultaneously Barton's closest friend and most devious enemy.

Walter Neff and Nino Zachetti are parallel figures in relation to Phyllis Dietrichson: they are both men whom she has ensnared in order to achieve her nefarious ends. Realizing this far too late, Walter warns Nino away from entering the Dietrichson residence after he has killed Phyllis, and urges law enforcement to "go easy" on Nino, identifying with his plight.