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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Gloriously rotten to the core

August 13, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I discuss the diamond anniversary of the release of Billy Wilder’s screen version of Double Indemnity. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Seventy-five years ago, “Double Indemnity” opened in theaters across America. It was an instant hit, and remains to this day a staple offering of revival houses and on cable TV and streaming video. Yet little journalistic notice has been taken of the birthday of Billy Wilder’s first great screen drama, a homicidal thriller that nonetheless had—and has—something truly unsettling to say about the dark crosscurrents of middle-class American life….

It’s hard to understand what possessed Wilder to take on such a project. He was best known in 1944, after all, for having collaborated with Charles Brackett, a Harvard-educated WASP, on the screenplays for such romantic comedies as “Ninotchka” and “Ball of Fire.” But then he swerved far off course and decided to make a movie out of a 1936 crime novella by James M. Cain, who also wrote “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” another hard-boiled tale of sex and bloodshed. Moreover, Wilder was determined to direct “Double Indemnity” himself, having concluded that most Hollywood directors treated scripts like “toilet paper that they either used or they didn’t.” The patrician Brackett had no interest in adapting so sordid a tale for the screen, so Wilder found himself another collaborator in Chandler. The two men soon grew to loathe one another, but the fruit of their uneasy labors landed seven Oscar nominations and turned Wilder into the hottest of properties.

Small wonder: Every aspect of “Double Indemnity” is distinguished, so much so that you could write a column about any single element….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

A scene from Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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