30 Day Film Challenge: Day 30 – Your Favorite Film This Time Last Year: Double Indemnity (1944)

I may have cheated on this entry, okay, I admit, I did cheat!

Day 30 – Your Favorite Film This Time Last Year

Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

In all honesty my favorite film this time last year was The Shawshank Redemption, but I said I wouldn’t use a movie twice for this project. That, and I realized that I had skewed somewhat modern in most of my choices. I love older films as much as the next classic film lover and I don’t like the fact that I did under represent so many of my favorites that were made before 1990. My solution to that is to give you one of my favorite movies from before 1990, and that movie is Double Indemnity. A lot of people view Double Indemnity as the quintessential noir, and while I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough to back up any sort of claim like that I can tell you that Double Indemnity is a damn fine noir. Edward G. Robinson is a force of nature, Barbara Stanwyck is sultrier than is legally allowed, and Fred MacMurray is so smarmy that it’s shocking. Billy Wilder keeps things hot, heavy, and always ready to fly over the edge, and every second of Double Indemnity is a glorious excursion into a seedy world that demands exploring.

That’s it for the 30 Day Film Challenge, hope you folks enjoyed what I had to say, and if you didn’t that’s just as fine. I had a blast writing these, thinking about them and interacting with the people who commented. Movies, yay!

Cheers,
Bill