Double Indemnity (1973) (TV)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

Jack Smight

Writers:

James M. Cain (novel)
Raymond Chandler (1944 screenplay) ...

Release Date:

13 October 1973 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Thriller | Drama

Plot:

A scheming wife lures an insurance investigator into helping murder her husband and then declare it an accident. The investigator's boss, not knowing his man is involved in it, suspects murder and sets out to prove it.

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Investigator | Insurance | Cuckolded Husband | Train

Cast

Richard Crenna	...	Walter Neff
Lee J. Cobb	...	Barton Keyes
Samantha Eggar	...	Phyllis Dietrickson
Robert Webber	...	Edward Norton
Arch Johnson	...	Dietrickson
Kathleen Cody	...	Lola Dietrickson
John Fiedler	...	Jackson
John Elerick	...	Donald Franklin
Gene Dynarski	...	Sam Bonventura
Joan Pringle	...	Neff's Secretary
Ken Renard	...	Porter
Arnold F. Turner	...	Redcap
Rand Brooks	...	Conductor
Joyce Cunning	...	Norton's Secretary
Tom Curtis	...	Charlie

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Groverton Productions

Movie Connections:

Version of Double Indemnity (1944)

A 1970s TV remake of a 1940s classic: write your own review

This 1973 TV remake of the Billy Wilder classic is inferior to the original. Surprise!

First, the good things. Lee J. Cobb makes a terrific Barton Keyes. He's not as good as Edward G. Robinson, of course, but he's the only reason to watch this. This remake's only improvement over the original is that it cuts down the role of Lola Dietrichson, the step-daughter of the femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson.

And that's it for the good things.

The bad things are many. The director records everything in an indifferent manner: if you watched the film with the sound muted you'd hardly get the impression that anything especially interesting was happening. Because of modern bad taste, the film must be in color instead of black and white. Because of 1970s bad taste, all the sets are distractingly ugly. Walter Neff's expensive apartment, in particular, is hideous.

The modern setting hurts in a lot of small ways. Train trips were a bit more unusual in the 70s than in the 40s, so Mr. Dietrichson's decision to take a train seems more of a contrivance. Men stopped wearing hats, which prevents Walter from covering up his brown hair while posing as the white-haired Mr. Dietrichson. Women in mourning stopped wearing veils, which robs Samantha Eggar of a prop Barbara Stanwyck made splendid use of in a key scene. (Oddly, Lola still has the line where she reveals that her stepmother was trying on a black hat and veil before she had need of them.)

Stephen Bochco keeps much of the Billy Wilder-Raymond Chandler script the same. But he makes a lot of tiny, inexplicable changes to the dialogue which leave the script slightly flabby where once it was lean and muscular. Outrageously, the famous motorcycle-cop banter is gone, but look closely and you'll see what looks like a post-production cut where those lines should have been. Bochco may not be to blame.

Richard Crenna is passable as Walter Neff. What might have made this version tolerable is a really splendid Phyllis Dietrichson. Instead we get Samantha Eggar, who comes off like a standard-issue villainess from "Barnaby Jones." But who can blame Eggar? With a director who barely seems interested in what's happening in front of the camera, how could Barbara Stanwyck herself have come off well?