“I suppose you’ll call this a confession when you hear it.”
Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) speeds through a red light and around a newspaper truck, frantically headed to the office at night. He plunks down in his chair, left shoulder stiff and immobilized, and turns on the dictaphone: “Dear Keyes…”
The opening monologue in Double Indemnity (1944, dir. Billy Wilder) is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s full of dismay, emotion, and intrigue. It sets up the film’s high-stakes story perfectly—without giving too much away.
I’ll admit—I respect Billy Wilder for his irreplaceable contribution to filmmaking; but I can’t help but harbor a bitter taste in my mouth because his 1960 film The Apartment edged ahead of Alfred Hitchcock’s psychologically thrilling masterpiece, Psycho (1960) for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Nevertheless, what Wilder did 16 years before that tragic day was impeccable.
Among Billy Wilder’s all-star filmography are wonders like Sunset Blvd. (1950), Sabrina (1954), and Some Like It Hot (1959), though the aforementioned The Apartment and Double Indemnity are perhaps his best. Wilder crafted with precision the noir-era story of romance, scandal, and mystery. So, too, he branched into the romantic comedy (The Apartment; One, Two, Three [1961]) style with excellence and ease.
The film under review, however, fits the former category—indeed it sets the bar high for noir as a sub-genre. Further, Double Indemnity utilizes the main-character-as-narrator angle to its full benefit. Inside the mind of Walter Neff, the events of romance, murder, and the eventual downfall of it all are even more introspective and heartbreaking.
Double Indemnity chronicles an insurance agent’s hopeful romance and devious murder-plot, charting the course from his first meeting one Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and their supposedly airtight plan to commit the perfect crime.
Encased in the 1944 noir masterpiece is the perfect mix between romance and distrust; tension and ease; sadness and triumph. The Substance Podcast—a thoughtful Christian variety show—covered Double Indemnity as a bonus episode with Seeing and Believing (a Christ and Pop Culture podcast) co-host, Kevin McLenithan back in November 2022. Their insights on this substantive film were poignant, fun, and deep. One of their points was how Double Indemnity paints morality in a black-and-white manner: the viewer knows what’s right and wrong, and the main characters sense that as well, even as they do terrible things.
Walter Neff is in love with—or at least lusting after—Phyllis, and he’s so compelled by his desires that he goes on to murder her husband. He feels bolstered by a successful life in the insurance sales industry, which gives him pride to pull off the “perfect” double indemnity crime; he assures Phyllis they’ll get away with $100,000 and, in effect, live happily ever after.
Perhaps the most poignant (even convicting) aspect of Double Indemnity is the trajectory of Walter Neff: he goes from a romantic, prideful, and successful man to a paranoid killer afraid of his own shadow. “It sounds crazy, Keyes, but it’s true, so help me: I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man.”
Walter isn’t simply recalling the rise and fall of a murder-plot—he’s working out, in his own words, a splintering conscience. The plan, the stress, the murder—it could all be worth it if he could just shove it down. Instead, even as he pulled off the crime (though he didn’t “get the girl”) he felt like a failure.
To make a rather candid point, we all wrestle with this eventually. The weight of our worldliness—our plots and devices and plans—falls heavy on our shoulders. We often know intrinsically that certain parts of our lives are darkened by selfishness, lust, pride, or other vices. And yet, we often prefer to walk as people unable to hear our footsteps. We’re tormented by our wrongs, so we watch our backs. Everything sets us off; the notion that we’ve “been made” is haunting.
As a noir film, Double Indemnity portrays this sentiment with perfection and as a central theme in the film. On the Substance Podcast, Kevin recalled that this film is almost like a Greek Tragedy in the way that Walter Neff’s flaws are seen through to his own destruction. Indeed, this is how we often feel: as if our flaws, our vices, our continued sins are the only things characteristic of us. It’s as if, to our peers and even our Creator, we are seen ultimately as people undone by our own doing.
But God sees us differently. When we plotted our way of “invisible” sins, God plotted a way to save us from them. Christianity is not a religion which claims, “get your act together, then come to the cross.” Rather, it meets us where we are, bruised, battered, and splintered though we may be, and beckons us to rest in the salvation which Christ brings. So too, when we have been saved by Christ and commit to live for Him, God does not automatically expect perfection; His mercies are still new, every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).
It often feels safer, living in the danger of our own (un)doing. It feels more comfortable to cower in darkness, running from the consequences we deserve. But Christ guarantees that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us (1 John 1:9).
All good things in this life are wrought through pain.
The most unrealistic expectation Walter Neff had was that “getting the girl” and striking gold could be achieved through devious shortcuts. The Good, True, and Beautiful are painstaking.
Wendell Berry famously wrote, “to love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.” This is true, if only from the standpoint that both the Love and the Good of this life are highly valuable and hard to come by. Love, indeed is worth it. And yet it’s only meaningful if it comes at great risk. My pastor once said, “the person you love most can hurt you the most.” That’s how it is; the closer one is to another, the more dangerous they become—and also, the more meaningful and powerful and good it may be. So, to love at any cost truly is a bargain, because the pay-off is exceedingly valuable. But to love, at any rate, is a risk.
Neff went through great risk in all the wrong ways for all the wrong things. Cutting corners and hashing plots to get the girl who would eventually confess:
“I never loved you, Walter. Not you, or anybody else. I’m rotten to the heart. I used you, just as you said. That’s all you ever meant to me—until a minute ago.”
At the end of it all, whatever “love” Walter and Phyllis shared was cheap; it was selfish and prideful. Both parties could only think of the easiest way to win big—only to see it all come crashing down.
The cautionary tale of this iconic noir film is to fight for what is true and good, to be honest and painstakingly committed to virtuous good. Don’t let your flaws exploit you for more than you bargained for, as Walter did. Live in love for people in this world who will strengthen you. Be honest to the bitter end.
True love—no shortcuts, no sub-plots, no selfish gain—is a risk, but it’s the greatest thing in the world. Double Indemnity is that noir film which charts the snowball effect of fatal flaws. It’s a riveting watch, replete with iconic lines and 1940’s-style dress and conversation; but it’s so much deeper than many might think. As Walter recalls, with brutal honesty, his own (un)doing, the film beckons us to ponder our own misgivings and question the motives behind our love and ache for success.
“Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money—and a woman—and I didn’t get the money and I didn't get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?”