Chapo Trap House - Movie Mindset 03 Teaser - Double Indemnity

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Enjoy the first 6 minutes of Will and Hesse's review of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944). Subscribe today for access to the full episode and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

You meet one Walter Neff, insurance salesman extraordinaire, played by Fred McMurray. And I got to think like, as a leading man, I think Fred McMurray is so perfectly cast in this, because like he is, how should I put this, not that great an actor as compared to William Holden, the lead in Sunset Boulevard, you know, just like a virtuoso, like he's just nothing but character, swag, like he's just everything, whereas Fred McMurray was mostly known as a star of kind of Disney family movies, like The Absent-Minded Professor, you know, he was fucking around the flubber, but then, but then, but then shows up as like two absolute shit heels in Billy Wilder movies for a double indemnity and then maybe even

a worst guy in the apartment. Oh yeah. But what I mean is like, unlike Holden, who is such a, such a presence, I think Fred McMurray works so beautifully in this movie because he is kind of a bland, every man, and he is this, he presents this kind of, this perfect portrait of the kind of like, sort of like a drift American male who's like, you know, like, as the movie begins, he's, you know, selling insurance and he's sort of like walking around and, you know, like, you know, his head in the clouds and a state of kind of boredom and sexual fantasy, basically is how

I describe it. Yeah. And he's, his narration is kind of like a pre Holden Caulfield, like he's very, not disillusioned, I would say, but like he kind of sees everything as like being bullshit. He's like, yeah, I do ensure it's, I'm good at it. Like the only real truth, I feel like that he sees is that his buddy keys is a good guy down and everything else is just like, you know, time to go out again today and sell some more policies.

But it's also like, you know, like the salesman is almost like an interesting figure in noir because it's just like in the era of the door to our salesman, it was just the sort of like men loosed upon to the world in the daytime when husbands are away to basically beguile, threaten or seduce housewives. And it's like, you know, it's a job that brings you into people's homes. And like, you know, in crossing that threshold, he begins to like, you know, envelop himself in this, in this world of sexual fantasy. As you know, at first thing we see of Barbara Stanwyck, the great femme fatale who plays

Ms. Dietrichson in this movie is she's in a towel. And we see like her as she comes down the stairs, we see some feedies. And you know, he notices the anklet. He keeps talking about the anklet. He's an ankle and foot guy. Oh yeah. But I should say like the movie actually begins with like he's, it's a late night, he's staggering into the office.

Like we know as the movie progresses that, you know, he's dying and he goes into his office to record the voiceover narration that we hear on this really cool, like wax cylinder. Yeah, that's actually how we're recording this podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm speaking into a gramophone and then Chris is running. He's actually cranking by hand. A wax cylinder.

A wax cylinder. Back in those days. And he's addressing, he's addressing his voiceover to his, his friend Keyes who we'll get into. I will just say that Keyes played by Edward G. Robinson is probably once again, like one of my favorite movie characters of all time, maybe one of my favorite performances of all time, Edward G. Robinson is just so, so compelling and perfect in this role as Keyes. The insurance claims investigator who is beguiled by his little man, i.e. the ulcer he has

from smoking 10 cigars an hour. And again, like what I like about the beginning is that like, you know, it's a story about murder but like from the first frames of the movie, there is absolutely no mystery as to who is guilty. Like he just says like, yeah, like I was the one who killed Detrickson. And there's not only is there any, not any mystery about who'd done it. There's also like, there's no mystery about his motive for doing it either. And in fact, actually the real mystery of the movie is, does he even know his own motives?

Yeah. Because he says to Keyes, like, oh, I did it for a woman and the money. And in the end, I didn't get the woman or and I didn't get the money. Yeah. But like what I think is so interesting about this movie is like kind of a psychological portrait is that I think the money and the girl are both excuses that are legible to him, but I don't think they're really the true motivation for why he does anything. No.

And it's the same in Sunset Boulevard too. It's like their motivations, these two guys are like so opaque and like only God knows why they're doing what they're doing. It's just like truly because they're just on the tracks going straight down the line and truly. And that's what I mean about like the very grim fatalism of both these movies is that like there's really nothing like even before like there's really nothing that the other three of these guys can do that could alter their tragic chorus that they've that they're

because they they were on that they were on the trolley car before they even knew they were on one. That's called being born. But so like, you know, it flashes back to him approaching the Dietrich's in-house, which by the way, still exists in Los Feliz. He mentions in the movie that it only costs $30,000, which is meant to be like the full episode. Subscribe at Patreon.com.

You can have that house in Los Feliz for $30,000 today, holy shit. There's so many little things like that in this movie where it's like, oh, yeah, it was the the forties were wild. Oh, God. Oh, I love all the details. Like one of the first things that the first dialogue between his nephew and like the elevator the elevator monkey that they get to like take him up two floors. And he's just like, working late, Mr. Duff.

And he's like bleeding to death. And he's like, oh, God, that's not a great thing about this movie is the horror of having to make for the full episode. Subscribe at patreon.com slash chopper trap house. It's like Barbara Stanwyck says at one point, oh, that's when Walter Neff tells her like, yeah, I just got my stuff at the deli down the street. And she's like, oh, that sounds great. It's all strangers.

So you don't have to hate them because you don't know them. And then so like, you know, he's there to follow up on an auto insurance claim to get to get the claim holder Mr. D. for the full episode. Subscribe at patreon.com slash choppo trap house.