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We have a book review today, the latest film book by Alain Silver and James Ursini,  authorities on film noir since the earliest days of the movement’s recognition in English-language print. The key reference book Film Noir Encyclopedia is their work, with writers like Elizabeth Ward and Bob Porfirio. Collectors with just a few film noir videodiscs will likely already be familiar with their audio commentaries.

Alain and Jim’s latest film book is now out under the TCM imprint. The title is From the Moment They Met It Was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir.  Its focus is that single Hollywood movie made in 1944; their thesis is that Double Indemnity singlehandedly pushed the Production Code office to accept harder, more adult themes, permitting the depiction of subject matter previously restricted to seamy pulp fiction. In doing so it firmly established the basics of the first wave of romantic-expressionist film noir.

It’s like the recent exposé about the making of Chinatown, but set in 1944.More than half of the book is a production history for Double Indemnity, that gets deep into the studio politics and career maneuvers of some high-powered Hollywood talent during the war years. Actors Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray had to be  convinced to accept the roles of cold-blooded murderers. The big stars of those years were more closely associated with the characters they played, and avoided roles that could tarnish their image, and marketability.

The text introduces us to a gallery of fascinating personalities. The novel by James M. Cain had been purchased by Hollywood years before, but the Production Code censors wouldn’t allow the filming of such a salaciously immoral story. Looking for a sensational property for his third movie, ace writer-director Billy Wilder seized on Cain’s novel as a must-make project, despite the censor obstructions. Wilder’s prestigious writing partner Charles Brackett declined to be involved, and when James M. Cain wasn’t available to co-write, Wilder turned to the other hot hardboiled crime novelist of the day, Raymond Chandler. The clash of personal habits, tastes, and lifestyles between these talents makes for excellent reading; Silver and Ursini chart the progress of the film adaptation with an eye to determining each writer’s contribution. Nobody structured stories better than Billy Wilder, but he had learned English as a second language. Raymond Chandler’s skill with snappy American dialogue was unequalled.

The book sources Paramount’s original production records plus interviews and diary entries by the participants. A number of mysteries are investigated: How did Wilder and Paramount get the Censor office to approve content in direct conflict with the Production Code?  How did they slip Barbara Stanwyck’s suggestive dialogue and provocative costumes past the censors, let alone a giant no-no, the open depiction of a flagrantly adulterous relationship?

 

The authors also confirm / debunk some apocryphal legends attached to Double Indemnity. A finale in the San Quentin Gas Chamber was scripted, filmed, edited and possibly previewed, but dropped at the last minute. Did the Gas Chamber scene serve as a kind of censorship insurance policy, to be used if the Code insisted that the guilty murderer be shown to pay for his crime?

The exhaustively researched From the Moment They Met It Was Murder functions as a group biography for several of its participants. The book  begins by recounting the 1920s crime that inspired Cain’s book Double Indemnity, a fascinating case of a husband murdered for an insurance payout. At the time it was considered The Trial of the Century, attended by celebrities and reported by cynical newsmen who would later become Hollywood screenwriters.

Alain Silver is an experienced film producer, and makes the book’s analysis of the production process yield more insights on the filming. A young actress was hired to play the murder victim’s daughter, but was dismissed before filming began because she looked ‘like a 12 year old.’  The movie was noted for its realism, but except for a very few establishing shots, every scene was filmed on indoor sound stages at Paramount.

 

As with Chinatown exactly 30 years later, the phenomenon of Double Indemnity became a major Hollywood talking subject. Wilder’s film was influential in that producers could now depict violence and adult concerns more directly. Silver and Ursini have collected a wealth of editorial and review excerpts addressing the sea change in what could now be filmed for America’s screens.

The final chapters of From the Moment They Met It Was Murder will interest readers more deeply attuned to film noir as a film movement and a style (not a genre), as indicated with the title extension … and the Rise of Film Noir. The authors offer proof that Double Indemnity became the springboard for the noir explosion of ‘dark’ thrillers that flourished in the following decade. The authors chart the filmmakers and the movies, showing Double Indemnity’s continuing influence. Billy Wilder would himself contribute three more titles to the effort, including the masterpieces  Sunset Blvd. and  Ace in the Hole. For rigorous students of film noir, the book’s extensive footnotes and bibiliography are an instant research source.

 

From the Moment They Met It Was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir is available variously in softcover and hardbound, at  Barnes & Noble,  Target,  Hachette Book Group and  Amazon.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson