I recently re-read Double Indemnity to prepare the new DVD
reissue of the classic noir film. Frankly, I found it one of
those very few films that is better than the book upon which
it is based. And, according to Richard Schickel's excellent
short book of the same title in the BFI Classics series, even
James M Cain agreed.
Although I enjoyed the book well enough, it was nowhere near
as great as Postman, which I also re-read not too long ago.
In many ways, DI is an expansion on the insurance angle that
came late in Postman, with the flipped perspective from the
insurance company side (admittedly, from the point of view of
an insider trying to beat it).
I had two problems in particular with the book. First, I
never got a sense of Huff's lust for the femme fatale,
Phyllis, certainly not to the degree of committing murder for
her. Part of this is the very different, more upright
background of the first person narrator from the vulgar one
in Postman, leading to a far more chaste description of the
affair, little more than a few kisses and elapsed time.
Perhaps Cain was censoring himself (or others were doing it
for him) after the reaction to the earlier book (not to
mention its being first published in a national magazine,
Liberty, and not a pulp one). Without this
"lust overriding reason" motivation, it seems more an
academic exercise on Huff's part to see if he's smart enough
to beat the insurance company, particularly the company's
investigator, Keyes. The motivation of the second murder is
far more understandable. Second, there is a whole lot of
backstory crammed into the last section of the book. This
attempt to explain Phyllis's "love of Death" comes off as if
Cain had just read a bit too much about Thanatos in one of
those psychology books that provide Keyes insight into the
minds of the defrauders he catches. This section almost
brings the short novel to a dead stop.
Screenwriters Chandler and Wilder rightly dumped all of that,
letting the actions speak for themselves. They also played up
the cat and mouse aspect of Huff (Neff in the film) and
Keyes. The book focused more on the machinations of Huff and
Phyllis as their partnership erodes. Playing up the
investigation really ramps up the suspense as we see Neff
trying to hold it together as Keyes gets closer.
I still recommend the book, but mostly as a comparison point
to see how the film improved upon it. Schickel's book is a
fascinating analysis of the process that went into that
adaptation.
By the way, isn't that Raymond Chandler himself sitting in
the chair in the hall when Neff walks out of Keyes's office
at 16:12 in the film?
Mark
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