Someone once said that there is less in Billy Wilder than meets the eye. But actually there is more. What meets the eye is usually pretty good. But it is often what meets the ear that's just as important. Where would Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot be without their scripts, fashioned by him and marvellous writers like Charles Brackett, IAL Diamond and, in the case of Double Indemnity, Raymond Chandler?
What Wilder contributed was an ironic Viennese mordancy that is frequently copied today without the slightest idea of how to accomplish it properly, so that it all becomes parody.
Double Indemnity is a classic 40s film of the sort that couldn't be made now without self- consciousness. Taken from James M Cain's work, and actually made a good deal better by Chandler, who used to call Cain "a Proust in overalls", it has the inimitable Fred MacMurray as an insurance agent seduced by Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale in order to dispose of her husband for the "double indemnity" insurance money.
The two work out a complicated scenario, which, after the death of the husband, is gradually uncovered by Edward G Robinson's private investigator. It isn't sexy, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, which Wilder always said was his model or testimonial. That wasn't possible in 1944 if you wanted to make a commercial movie that didn't worry the Paramount executives and, anyway, Wilder was invariably as interested in what might get him into trouble as in his dialogue.
The film is marvellously acted, particularly by MacMurray, who was so often cast in relatively anodyne romantic roles that his all-American wholesomeness could become cloying. Here that persona was brilliantly exploited to show us the weakness behind it. Wilder always depended upon his casts because sometimes the characterisation wasn't as sharp as the dialogue.
Another factor that makes Double Indemnity exceptional is its humour and lightness of touch, which prevent what is a decidedly dark tale, illustrated by Miklos Rozsa's superb score (based on César Franck) subsiding into melodrama.
The scene where the insurance man first meets Stanwyck - he's trying to persuade her husband to renew his motor policy - has her at the top of the stairs dressed only in a towel. Eyeing her with some interest, he says: "I'd hate to think of you getting a scratched fender when you're not covered." Stanwyck replies: "I know what you mean. I've been sunbathing." "Hope there weren't any pigeons around," he replies.
Later, the world-weary, Marlowe-like voiceover proclaims, as he drives away from the encounter: "It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that street. How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like that?"
Wilder once proclaimed Double Indemnity his best film. Asked why, he said: "It had the fewest mistakes." He was probably right.
