More genuine emotion is centered elsewhere. It involves Neff’s fear of discovery, and his feelings for Keyes. Edward G. Robinson plays the inspector as a nonconformist who loosens his tie, reclines on the office couch, smokes cheap cigars, and wants to make Neff his assistant. He’s a father figure, or more. He’s also smart, and eventually he figures out that a crime was committed—and exactly how it was committed. His investigation leads to two scenes of queasy tension. One is when Keyes invites Neff to his office, and then calls in a witness who saw Neff on the train. Another is when Keyes calls unexpectedly at Neff’s apartment, when Neff expects Phyllis to arrive momentarily—and incriminatingly.
Does Keyes suspect Neff? You can’t really say. He arranges situations in which Neff’s guilt might be discovered, but they’re part of his routine techniques; perhaps only his subconscious, “the little man who lives in my stomach,” suspects Neff.
The end of the film is curious (it’s the beginning, too, so I’m not giving it away). Why does the wounded Neff go to the office and dictate a confession if he still presumably hopes to escape? Because he wants to be discovered by Keyes? Neff tells him, “You know why you couldn’t figure this one, Keyes? I’ll tell you. Because the guy you were looking for was too close—right across the desk from you.” Keyes says, “Closer than that, Walter,” and then Neff says, “I love you, too.” Neff has been lighting Keyes’s smokes all during the movie, and now Keyes lights Neff’s. You see why a gas chamber would have been superfluous.
Wilder’s Double Indemnity was one of the earlier films noir. The photography by John Seitz helped develop the noir style of sharp-edged shadows and shots, strange angles, and lonely Edward Hopper settings. It’s the right fit for the hard urban atmosphere and dialogue created by Cain, Chandler, and the other writers Edmund Wilson called “the boys in the back room.”
Double Indemnity has one of the most familiar noir themes: The hero is not a criminal, but a weak man who is tempted and succumbs. In this “double” story, the woman and man tempt each other; neither would have acted alone. Both are attracted not so much by the crime as by the thrill of committing it with the other person. Love and money are pretenses. The husband’s death turns out to be their one-night stand.
Wilder, born in Austria in 1906, arrived in America in 1933, and still a Hollywood landmark, has an angle on stories like this. He doesn’t go for the obvious arc. He isn’t interested in the same things the characters are interested in. He wants to know what happens to them after they do what they think is so important. He doesn’t want truth, but consequences.
Few other directors have made so many films that were so taut, savvy, cynical, and, in many different ways and tones, funny. After a start as a screenwriter, his directorial credits include The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and The Fortune Cookie. I don’t like lists but I can’t stop typing. Double Indemnity was his third film as a director. That early in his career, he was already cocky enough to begin a thriller with the lines “I killed him for money—and for a woman. I didn’t get the money. And I didn’t get the woman.” And end it with the hero saying “I love you, too” to Edward G. Robinson.
In a Lonely Place
NO MPAA RATING, 94 m., 1950
Humphrey Bogart (Dixon Steele), Gloria Grahame (Laurel Gray), Frank Lovejoy (Detective Sergeant Brub Nicolai), Martha Stewart (Mildred Atkinson). Directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by Robert Lord. Screenplay by Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North, based on the novel Dorothy B. Hughes.
The courtyard of the Hollywood building occupied by Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place (1950) is one of the most evocative spaces I’ve seen in a movie. Small apartments are lined up around a Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain. Each flat is occupied by a single person. If you look across from your window, you can see into the life of your neighbor.
One apartment is occupied by Dixon Steele, an alcoholic screenwriter who has some success but is now in the midst of a long, dry spell. Across from him is Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), a would-be actress and a smart cookie. Steele is a bitter, angry man. Drinking at noon in his usual hangout, he succeeds in insulting his agent, punching a man who is cruel to an aging has-been actor and then getting in a fistfight with the son of a studio chief.
This concise opening scene, set in a bar inspired by Bogart’s own hangout, Romanoff’s, establishes Dixon Steele’s character and summarizes some of the things we sense about Bogart, that enigmatic man. They both drink too much. They’re both idealists who sympathize with underdogs. They both have a temper. Steele has, and Bogart was always able to evoke self-pity; remember his Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Bogart was at his best in conflicted roles, at his weakest in straightforward macho parts. Steele’s qualities make him an ideal partner for Laurel Gray, who has been around, knows the ropes, and is more likely to fall for a wounded pigeon than a regular guy.
In a Lonely Place has been described by the critic Kim Morgan as “one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever committed to film,” and love is indeed what it’s really about. It has the look, feel, and trappings of a film noir, and a murder takes place in it, but it is really about the dark places in a man’s soul and a woman who thinks she can heal them.
As carefully constructed by Bogart, who produced it, and directed by Nicholas Ray, from a great noir novel by Dorothy Hughes, it’s at pains to make its man and women adults who know their way around. Neither is a victim, except of their own natures: Dixon Steele a drinker with rotten self-esteem, Laurel Gray a woman who should know better than to invest in him.
In the film, Steele is given the job of adapting a trashy best-seller. He needs the work, but he can’t even bear to read the novel. A friendly hat-check girl named Mildred (Martha Stewart) tells him she loved it, and he hires her to come home with him and tell him the story. On their way through his courtyard, they pass Laurel Gray, and Gloria Grahame is perfect in how she conveys to him that she notices him. The storytelling session drags on, Mildred becomes a bore, and Steele sends her away. The next morning she’s found murdered. Steele, seen to leave the bar with her and with a long rap sheet involving assaults and fights, is the logical suspect.
Did anyone see Mildred leave his apartment? Yes, as it turns out, Laurel says she did, and provides an alibi when she’s brought to the police station. Something happens between Laurel and Dixon in the captain’s office that is unmistakable—and later that day they act upon it, no small talk, hungry with passion and hope.
Laurel gets Dixon off the sauce. He starts writing again. They’re helplessly in love, a little giddy with happiness. But the possibility lingers that he did murder the girl, and that Laurel testified for him out of instinct more than certain knowledge. An idyllic interlude on the beach suddenly turns ugly and leads to worse. We, and Laurel, are presented with the possibility that her life is in danger, especially if he drinks again. Ambiguity about the true Dixon Steele provides the soul of the film, the fact that they truly love each other its poignancy.
This is a crisp black-and-white film with an almost ruthless efficiency of style. It taps into the psyches of the three principals: Bogart, who bought the story to produce with his company; Nicholas Ray, a lean iconoclast of films about wounded men (James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause), and the legendary Gloria Grahame (1923–81), whose life story inspired Peter Turner’s extraordinary book Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. Turner was the last of her many loves. She was married to Nicholas Ray but that ended during the making of this film, when Ray found her in bed with his thirteen-year-old son by an earlier marriage. (She and the boy, Tony, were married from 1960 to 1974.)