To describe the story is to miss the nuances that make it tantalizing. Phyllis wants Walter to sell her husband a $50,000 double indemnity policy, and then arrange the husband's "accidental” death. Walter is willing, ostensibly because he's fallen under her sexual spell. They perform a clever substitution. The husband, on crutches with a broken leg, is choked to death before a train ride. Taking his place, Neff gets on the train and jumps off. They leave the husband's body on the tracks. Perfect. But later that night, going to the drugstore to establish an alibi, Neff remembers, "I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man.”
A clever crime. But why did they do it? Phyllis was bored and her husband had lost a lot of money in the oil business, so she had a motive. But it's as if the idea of murder materialized only because Neff did -- right there in her living room, talking about insurance. On their third meeting, after a lot of aggressive wordplay, they agree to kill the husband and collect the money. I guess they also make love; in 1944 movies you can't be sure, but if they do, it's only the once.
Why? Is Neff blinded by lust and greed? That's the traditional reading of the film: weak man, strong woman. But he's aloof, cold, hard, terse. He always calls her "baby,” as if she's a brand, not a woman. His eyes are guarded and his posture reserved. He's not moonstruck. And Phyllis? Cold, too. But later in the film she says she cares more about "them” than about the money. We can believe the husband died for money if they both seem driven by greed, but they're not. We can believe he died because of their passion, but it seems more like a pretense, and fades away after the murder.
Standing back from the film and what it expects us to think, I see them engaged not in romance or theft, but in behavior. They're intoxicated by their personal styles. Styles learned in the movies, and from radio and the detective magazines. It's as if they were invented by Ben Hecht through his crime dialogue. Walter and Phyllis are pulp characters with little psychological depth, and that's the way Billy Wilder wants it. His best films are sardonic comedies, and in this one, Phyllis and Walter play a bad joke on themselves.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46gqZ6ZpGK6sMLInmSdp6WXuaZ5yKebnqWensG6eZBya20%3D