Double Indemnity

a film by Billy Wilder

Negro sobre blanco continues with Billy Wilder — yes, the Billy Wilder, the Some Like It Hot Billy Wilder — 1944 classic Double Indemnity. (As usual, the Spanish title, Perdición, has little to do with the original.) Fred MacMurray is great as an insurance salesman (I always knew they are evil) but it is his voiceover narration that really makes the film. On the contrary, Barbara Stanwyck’s character is not particularly convincing femme fatale — and a bad shot too, although I can’t blame the actress for that. Edward G. Robinson is fabulous as Barton Keyes, a claims adjuster.

Norton: She can go to court and we can prove it was suicide.
Keyes: Can we? Mr. Norton, first thing that struck me was that suicide angle. Only I dumped it into the wastepaper basket just three seconds later. You know, you, uh, oughta take a look at the statistics on suicide some time. You might learn a little something about the insurance business.
Norton: Mister Keyes, I was raised in the insurance business.
Keyes: Yeah, in the front office. Come now, you’ve never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why, they’ve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison: subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps: subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But, Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there’s not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No, no soap, Mr. Norton. We’re sunk, and we’ll have to pay through the nose, and you know it. May I have this? Come on, Walter. Next time I’ll rent a tuxedo.