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  the rise of Film noir double Indemnity During the war a new mood of cynicism, pessimism, and darkness had crept into the American cinema. Double Indemnity was the best written, the most characteristically film noir of the period. Double Indemnity was the first film which played film noir for what it essentially was: small-time, unredeemed, unheroic. —Paul Schrader, film historian In his book on film noir, William Hare repeats the story that one day Billy Wilder could not find his secretary. He was told by one of the women in the office that she was holed up in the ladies’ room, reading a novella titled Double Indemnity. After she emerged with the novelette “pressed against her bosom,” Wilder decided to read it himself.1 A nice anecdote, but apocryphal. Wilder maintained that Joseph Sistrom, the enterprising young executive who had suggested that Wilder turn the play Connie Goes Home into The Major and the Minor, “had read the [Cain] story and brought it to my attention.”2 Sistrom was a devotee of popular fiction and was familiar with the pulp fiction turned out by Cain and others. He had read Double Indemnity as it was serialized in Liberty magazine, in back issues from February 15 through April 4, 1936, which he had found in the story department ’s archives. When Double Indemnity was published in book form in 1943, he suggested the property to Wilder. The story, a turgid tale of greed, lust, and betrayal, was right up Wilder’s street. After all, “the Berlin of the 1920s had taught Wilder to recognize decadence when he saw it,” as Richard Schickel writes in his monograph on this film.3 Double Indemnity portrayed a decadent, depraved world of violence and duplicity. Wilder would give us a foreigner’s vision of the underside of American life, as represented by the back streets of Los Some LIke It WILder  Angeles where the film is set. It is a drab world, devoid of beauty and decency. Wilder was aware from the get-go that Cain’s story would present him with censorship problems. The novella had already been considered and rejected by the major studios in 1935, shortly before it was serialized in Liberty magazine. This lurid tale describes how a villainess named Phyllis lures Walter, an insurance salesman, into a conspiracy to murder her husband for his insurance money—a conspiracy that becomes a recipe for their destruction . Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had inquired of Joseph Breen whether Cain’s novelette was suitable for filming. Breen shot back a letter to MGM executive Louis B. Mayer, dated October 10, 1935, in which he asserted, “The story deals improperly with an illicit and adulterous sex relationship. The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story make it . . . thoroughly unacceptable for screen production,” according to the censorship code implemented by the industry in 1934.4 Moreover, Breen noted, the novella portrayed the actual planning and carrying out of a murder plot in minute detail, and “filmmakers were forbidden to depict details of a crime that might permit its imitation in real life.” Indeed, Breen considered the novella to be a “blueprint for murder,” which could show potential criminals how to kill for profit.5 Breen’s letter scared off not only MGM but also every other studio in town from considering Double Indemnity as a viable film project. Cain remembered his agent’s showing him a copy of Breen’s report: “It started off, ‘under no circumstances,’ and ended up, ‘no way, shape, or form.’ My agent asked me if I wanted to hear what was in between, and I told him I could guess.” Eight years later, when Double Indemnity was published in book form, “my new agent, H. N. Swanson, sent it again to eight studios,” Cain recalled. Sistrom passed it on to Wilder, who snapped it up and immediately “took it home and read it.” Wilder arranged to buy the screen rights for a mere fifteen thousand dollars—there were no other bids.6 On September 21, 1943, Paramount sent Breen a screen treatment of Double Indemnity, a detailed synopsis that Wilder had prepared in conjunction with Charles Brackett. The censor felt that the revised story line, which they had composed according to his specifications, had overcome in large measure his original concerns. Breen added that, after all, “adultery is no longer quite as objectionable” as it once was in motion pictures.7 Sistrom agreed to produce Double Indemnity in Brackett...

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