#29 Double Indemnity (1944)

Plot summary (with spoilers): A man named Walter Neff staggers into an office building. He walks over to a desk and pulls out of the drawer some sort of suitcase-looking thing with what looks like one half of one of those old-timey looking phones coming out of it. I'm usually being sarcastic when I pretend not to know what some bit of technology from the Olden Times is, but this time I'm legitimately flummoxed. Is it some kind of phone? A suitcase phone? He talks into it, all hardboiled and noir-like and says he's recording "what you might say is my last confession". So...it's like a tape recorder before there were cassettes? Is he recording on a record?  Should I do some fancy google-fu or live in ignorance? Hmm...it's a fair question. Here's another one: am I stalling because this movie was boring as hell but not bad enough to have fun ripping to shreds like Sound of Music? Hmm.  Another mystery.
Anyway, Walter Neff's recording a message to his boss, Barton Keyes. It's a confession. Neff's an insurance agent. It all started one day on a routine door-to-door visit to a Mr. and Mrs. Dietrichson. Mr. Dietrichson wasn't home so Walter was going to come back later, but the wife Phyllis said she could listen to the pitch herself, kinda like if she were a fully equal adult in a consenting relationship or something. Sheesh. Dames.
The "witty" double and double and half entendres go flying back and forth for awhile and Walter says will she please take the car insurance offer to the man of the house and get back to him and she says do you sell other insurance,
Sure all kinds
Like life insurance?
Yeah sure
I want to buy him life insurance but as a surprise for his birthday and can I forge his name, I don't want him to be bothered with all the details.
He calls her baby like ten thousand times and then says he's wise to her plan and the jig is up and cuckoo-cachoo Mrs. Robinsion blah blah blah and he's out the door. Then I shit you not in the VO he says that he knew she was no good but she smelled like honeysuckle and "how could I know that murder sometimes smells like honeysuckle?"
Well, indeed. A fair point, weirdo. How could you know?
So he goes back home but she shows up a bit later with his hat that he forgot and he says let's talk more about your horrible plan that I'm still totally against and she says "I'm a girl, I have boobies!" And they passionately press their tightly sealed mouths together in an approximation of a kiss and then Walter VO's that the Evil Jezebel had her hooks in him.
So they come up with a plan to sell Mr. Dietrichson 100,000 dollars worth of life insurance with a double indemnity clause that pays double if he is killed on a train, which is just fucking bizarre, but okay. They forge his name. Then Phyllis tells Walter that her husband is going away on a business trip on Friday and that would be the perfect time to enact their plan. The husband's adult daughter from a previous marriage, Lola, lives with the family but Phyllis says she won't be a problem.
So it turns out the day before he's supposed to go on the trip, Mr. Dietrichson broke his leg, so Walter and Phyllis says that makes their still-unrevealed plan even easier to pull off. On Friday, Walter sneaks into the Dietrichson's garage and hides in the backseat of the car. Phyllis sees him and says nothing, and gets in the driver's seat, while Mr. Dietrichson gets into the passenger's. They drive to the train station, but suddenly on an empty road, Phyllis stops driving and when Mr. Dietrichson asks why, Walter sits up and throttles him (off-camera). He makes choking noises as the sweet smell of honeysuckle fills the air.
Then they go to the train station and Walter puts on a fake leg cast and crutches onto the train. Phyllis says, "goodbye, my husband, Mr. Dietrichson!" really loud like twenty times and they kiss goodbye and Walter shows the conductor his ticket and gets on the train. He goes to the caboose, which is an "observation deck" that is outside, which is kinda cool. A man is already out there. He tries to engage in conversation with Walter, but Walter won't look at him. Finally Walter says he's out of cigars and will the men please go to his car and get him one? The man says yes and as soon as he disappears, Walter jumps off the train. He staggers forward and then Phyllis pulls up. They take Mr. Dietrichson out of the backseat and put him on the tracks.
Ah. That's pretty clever, actually.
Fade out. Time passes. The police think Mr. Dietrichson got "tangled up" in his crutches and fell off the train, and they're satisfied all is well. But Barton Keyes, the claims adjuster to whom Walter is currently confessing, was not satisfied. He said the whole thing smelled like honeysuckle and that he suspected Mrs. Dietrichson was hiding something. So he conducts an investigation while Walter sweats it out and feels guilty and gets paranoid and all the typical stuff in this genre. They can't meet because Keyes is having Phyllis  followed. But then they meet anyway in a grocery store but Phyllis is wearing sunglasses so it's okay or something. Phyllis wants to know why they haven't paid out on the claim yet and Walter says it's because his boss suspects something and they have to play it cool.
Then Mr. Dietrichson's daughter Lola shows up at the office and tells Walter that she suspects her stepmom killed her dad, and that Phyllis' previous husband also died mysteriously. Walter realizes that this is a Red Flag and that he's a Stoolie and a Chump but he's In Too Deep now and must Play It Through. Lola says she's going to the police with her suspicions (with certainly make more sense than going to her dad's insurance agent) so Walter takes her on a date an encourages her to tell him all her troubles to distract her from going to the police, which somehow works.
Meanwhile Keyes is like Hank Schrader to Neff's Walter White, and tells Neff about all his suspicions and progress in investigating Phyllis. He says that he has a witness from the train. In walks the guy on the observation deck. Walter freaks, but the guy doesn't recognize him, though he does see pictures of the deceased Mr. Dietrichson and says that that guy definitely wasn't on the train.
Keyes basically figures out the whole thing from that and says that Phyllis must be working with an accomplice who boarded the train. He says that the PI he hired saw Phyllis with a young man at the grocery store. Walter gulps and pulls on his necktie and gets out of there. Then Lola comes to see him and says that her boyfriend is secretly seeing her stepmother on the sly and she suspects they killed her dad together. Walter realizes he's not that young and the PI caught Phyllis with a different guy. Walter goes to Phyllis' house and confronts her with this and sure enough, the plan all along was for Phyllis and her young boyfriend to kill Mr. Dietrichson and run off with the money but they needed a patsy on the inside to help pull it off. Phyllis then shoots Walter in the shoulder. Then she says she can't shoot again because right now at this very minute she realizes that she's in love with him. Sigh. But then Walter shoots her dead. He then staggers back to the office to catch up with the beginning of the movie.
Walter finishes his recording and then Keyes walks in, having been secretly listening. How long had he been standing there? Long enough, natch.
So then as Walter dies he says you figured out everything but me because you were too close to me.
Keyes lights Walter's cigarette and says even closer than that.
And Walter says I love you, too and then dies.
Oh whatever, movie. Don't try to win me over by getting all weirdly gay right at the end.

Review: There's nothing terribly wrong with this movie. It's just very simple and straightforward and by-the-numbers in nearly all of it. The plot is very tame (while embarrassingly presenting itself as hardcore) with precious few noir-like twists and no particularly engaging or memorable characters. I know this is another one of those "first of it's kind" things that AFI likes to honor so much, even if movies that came later are much better. So let's go with that. But Maltese Falcon was a better film in the same genre and it was three years older, so who knows?
It's just lame.

Stars: Two out of five.

Next, we honor our gay forefathers with "All About Eve" and then it's Marty McFly vs. Buford Tannen in "High Noon".