Blog Entry #5

In Roger Ebert’s film review titled “Double Indemnity (1944),” he describes “Double Indemnity as having one of the most familiar noir themes.”  Ebert did a nice job in his analysis and evaluation of the film by asking questions about certain characteristics of the film and then and responding to it with his ideas as well.   At first, he offers a short background to the film, noting it based on the writings of James M. Cain.  He explains the film had eliminated Cain’s ending and added a deepened relationship between Neff and Keyes.  He also clarifies that the film was originally set to end with Walter in a gas chamber, but that scene was cut.  He then goes onto describing the story, and calling the crime, “Perfect and clever.”  He describes the relationship between the two characters of Walter and Phyllis as, “the enigma that keeps it new, is what these two people really think of one another.”  Ebert describes Walter as, “aloof, cold, hard, terse,” and Phyllis as, “Cold, too.”  Ebert goes beyond what he sees in the film and examines it to his understanding.  His view on the relationship between Walter and Phyllis is, “not engaged in romance or theft, but in behavior.”  He describes their character as, “pulp with little psychological depth,” in which they had “played a bad joke on themselves.”  His reasoning is that the director Billy Wilder wanted that to be the case as it was with mostly in his best films, which are sardonic comedies.  Ebert notions that more genuine emotion was centered elsewhere between Walter and Keyes, which involved Walter’s fear of discovery, and his feeling for Keyes.  Ebert describes Keyes as a “father figure, or more.”  Because of this relationship, Ebert labels the end of the film as, “curious.”  He goes onto explaining why the gas chamber scene would have been, “superfluous,” and that this ending, “turned out to be the perfect way to close the film.”  In his conclusion, Ebert portrays the hero as, “a weak man rather than a criminal who is tempted and succumbs.”   He labels the story as, “’double’ in which the woman and man tempt one another, neither would have acted alone.  Both are attracted not so much by the crime and the thrill of it with the other person.  Love and money are pretenses.  The husband’s death turns out to be their one-night stand.”

            This article focused mostly on the movie itself directing its theme generally on the relationships between the characters.  In my opinion, the critic, Roger Ebert did a great job analyzing the film by asking questions and giving his own insights to the film.  His review provided me with new insights to the film; such as the sexual overtones between Walter and Keyes’ relationship is that of another leg to a love triangle.  It is as if there relationship is viewed to be like a father-son or brotherly bond.