On Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 8:17:25 AM UTC-10, wlah...@gmail.com wrote:

Hey,

One morning on the set of “Double Indemnity,” Billy Wilder announced, “Keep it quiet. After all, history is being made.”

Whether Wilder was once again dipping into self-aggrandizement or
whether he really understood that his film of James M Cain’s novel
would forever alter the Hollywood crime film isn’t known. Either way,
he was right.

Based on a script that Wilder wrote with Raymond Chandler and starring
Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G Robinson, among others, “Double Indemnity” would have an impact few other films can claim. As “Jaws” and “Enter The Dragon” redefined and invigorated moribund genres, “Double Indemnity” irrevocably altered the Hollywood crime
film.

“Laura,” “The Stranger on the Third Floor,” and “The Maltese Falcon”
are whodunits whose time was just about over. What changed the postwar Hollywood crime film wasn’t an imagined postwar disillusionment in the
US or trembling émigrés still stuck in German expressionism or
bubbling moral ambiguities just beyond the shadows. With the exception
of the appearance of US soldiers in the films – intended as a way to
sell tickets – World War II had almost no effect on the Hollywood
crime film.

There is a September 7, 1944, New York Times movie review of “Double Indemnity” that contains an interesting observation. “For Billy Wilder,” wrote critic Bosley Crowther, “has filmed the Cain story of
the brassy couple who attempt a ‘perfect crime,’ in order to collect some insurance, with a realism reminiscent of the bite of past French films.”

That Cain was influenced by Émile Zola and Billy Wilder by Jean Renoir
is obvious. Raymond Chandler once wrote of Dash Hammett that “Hammett
took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley.”
The French film noirs of the 1930s took it another step and dropped it
into the hearts of common people. Murder – and other crimes – no
longer belonged to the criminal underground.

Years later when a second-rate French critic threw the term “film
noir” into a review of several Hollywood films (including “Double Indemnity”), the die was loaded and the game was fixed. What followed
is an incomprehensible theory that no one can agree on and has managed
to throw more shadow than light on the films that the theory has been applied to.

Billy Wilder had the sardonic humor to appreciate that.

"The One Thing Billy Wilder Regrets The Most About Double Indemnity":

https://www.slashfilm.com/799549/the-one-thing-billy-wilder-regrets-the-most-about-double-indemnity/

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