MissSimonetta
Take Billy Wilder's amazing 1944 adaptation of Double Indemnity and then sap out all the blood. That's this 1973 made for television version.There's no style to anything. Gone are the claustrophobic sets and the sense of oppressive summer heat wave which gave atmosphere to the original. None of the sets seem designed to do anything other than give the boring, charisma-less actors space to march around in. None of the players are even close to the performances of the original. It's a hard chore to even equal, let alone top, the likes of Barbara Stanwyck or Edward G. Robinson. These people don't even come close.The cinematography is bland. No sexual tension. The dialogue is the same but when it's delivered with no verve it barely simmers. The climax is not so much built to as it is stumbled upon by bloodless characters.Ignore this. Not worth your time. Not worth the film it was shot on at all.
SnoopyStyle
Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Richard Crenna) is hurt and returns to his office to record a confession. The movie recounts his story. His boss at Pacific Casualty, Barton Keyes (Lee J. Cobb), is an expert at uncovering fraud. Walter does a home visit to Dietrichson. He's not home but his alluring wife Phyllis (Samantha Eggar) is there to meet him. She suggests buying accident insurance for her husband without telling him. Walter accuses her of planning to kill her husband. She tracks Walter to his home and he helps plan the perfect scheme. He secretly sells her husband an accident insurance policy and insists on killing him on a train to collect the double indemnity of $400k.This is an unnecessary remake and not a good one. There is no particular style other than 70's TV. It is bare bones. Richard Crenna is a little old and not enough. Samantha Eggar is a beautiful woman but her clothing does not accentuates her femme fatale. Everything is somewhat bland which questions the purpose of this remake. On the other hand, Lee J. Cobb is great but it's not enough.
charlytully
I have it on good authority that James M. Cain turned over in his grave when this haphazard rendering of his novella DOUBLE INDEMNITY emanated from the boob tube in the early 1970s. (Seriously, he was 81, and kicked the bucket four years later.) Be that as it may, if you watch both the original and a remake from decades later for the first time because the film studio is making more money on a deluxe DVD set than it would by packaging the original alone, it usually turns out to be a case of a defendant providing the rope with which they should be hoisted up, figuratively speaking. Crass Universal Studios took an earlier effort nominated for seven Oscars, which largely created the genre of film noir, and de-noired it in a sloppy adaptation they probably hoped people would skip to focus on the commercials. Almost every character name and line from the original was retained, no matter how anachronistic. But most of the TV cast is so third-rate that when they change the name of Lola's boyfriend from Nino Zachetti (beyond their powers of pronunciation) to Donny Franklin, airhead Kathleen Cody (as Lola) calls him "Johnny" when he's first introduced. Key lines of dialog are chopped in half, to fit in more TV ads. And Billy Goldenberg's musical score would be more suitable for a situation comedy. Even if this were the first adaptation of Cain's story, it would not come within a hundred miles of an Emmy nomination.
Robert J. Maxwell
You can't help comparing this 1973 TV version to the 1940s original directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. As expected, the original comes out light years ahead, a classic of genuine film noir.The story line is still here. The skull shows through the skin. An insurance salesman connives with a manipulative seductress to murder her husband and collect double indemnity on the insurance policy they've just taken out on him. The claims manager, Lee J. Cobb here, unravels the plot. The criminal couple shoot and kill one another. That much is the same.So what's the problem? Well, there are a couple of problems, and some other changes that aren't necessarily problems but don't add anything to the experience of viewing the film.The story belongs in the 1940s. When Wilder and Raymond Chandler (in his sober period) put the thing together it had a good, old-fashioned black-and-white pizazz in its dialog and setting that just doesn't fit well into the 1970s.Phyllis Dietrichson belongs in a slightly cramped but very comfortable old house, a slightly dated mission-style multi-story dwelling with honeysuckle around it and windows that can be closed and shuttered. People in this film live in comparative luxury. The plush carpets are the color of rust. Phyllis (Samantha Eggar) lives in a modern house that resembles a cement box on the outside. No honeysuckle vine would dream of trying to creep up the walls because the Mexican gardener would snip it off in a jiffy. Walter Neff (Richard Crenna) lives in a pad in Marina del Ray with a view of the yacht moorings, instead of the somewhat seedy hotel flat in the original. In Crenna's apartment, you'd probably have to use coasters. Everyone here seems too -- comfortable. When Eggar complains of her husband that he has no money it's impossible to believe her.The wardrobe too is updated, of course, or rather it WAS up to date in 1973. Never saw so many turtlenecks. And such fashionably long hair on the men.And 1973 was part of an era -- let's call it pre-Godfather -- when you still had to watch it in using ethnic names. So Lola's no-good boyfriend (a med-school dropout in the original, a law student here) is no longer Nino Sachetti but somebody with a barbaric and WASPy name like Don Franklin. That's not a name for a resentful, misguided kid. That's the name of a TV game show host. "Chris Martin Productions presents RING MY BELL -- with your host, Don FRANKlin!" Incidents, themes almost, are elided. Not much goes on in the way of affection between Neff and his boss. In the original it's symbolized by Neff's always having to provide Keyes with a match to light his cigar and Keyes' growling thanks. The match business is simply left out of this version.So is the witness's (John Fiedler) trying to pry some extra money out of the Insurance company to cover his overnight visit to LA from Medford, Oregon. "There's a chiropractor I need to see," Porter Hall wheedles in the original. "Just don't put her on the expense account," snarls Keyes. It's one of the few humorous moments in the story. What's gained by leaving it out? Left out too is what is surely the funniest incident in the original, when Keyes gives his boss a big speech spelling out in humiliating detail precisely how dumb his boss is, then grabs a glass of water out of his boss's hand, asks, "Mind if I have this?", and nervously gulps it down. Otherwise the dialog is almost identical to the original, except for the addition of a wisecrack near the beginning, when Neff tells Phyllis, "I gave up a Rhodes scholarship to peddle insurance door to door." Performances. Crenna is probably as good as MacMurray was in the original. And although Lee J. Cobb as Keyes isn't the human buzz saw that Edward G. Robinson was in the original, he carries the part in his own exasperated way. Samantha Eggar, alas, is no Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck was pretty in a sluttish way, with that fake blonde wig, and a better actress too. Watch Stanwyck's face when the camera focuses on it and her husband is getting his neck broken in the seat next to her. There's a slight smile curling up the edges of her lips. And that nasal Brooklyn voice helps. Eggar with her fresh modelesque beauty, deep red fluffy hair, freckled face, Brit accent, and big green eyes is all innocence. When HER husband is killed, she simply stares into the camera when the shot is duplicated.Most shots, however, are not duplicated. Not that it matters much because the director, Jack Smight, who has done interesting work elsewhere ("No Way to Treat a Lady", eg.), seems to have approached this project the way we might approach commuting to work in the morning. Nothing much goes on. The wheels aren't turning.Oh, well. You may appreciate this more if you've never seen the original. At that, I'm surprised that there hasn't been another remake yet. It's been thirty years and more since this copy. And there must be a nickel left in the story yet, especially if it has much more blood and explicit sex in it, and something on the sound track other than, "I'll Remember April."
