Thursday April 6 | 7PM Double Indemnity USA 1944 d. Billy Wilder with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova and John Philliber. Black and white. 107 m
“This shrewd, smoothly tawdry thriller, directed by Billy Wilder, is one of the high points of nineteen-forties films. Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson—a platinum blonde who wears tight white sweaters, an anklet, and sleazy-kinky shoes—is perhaps the best acted and the most fixating of all the slutty, cold-blooded femmes fatales of the film-noir genre. With her bold stare, her sneering, over-lipsticked, thick-looking mouth and her strategically displayed legs, she’s a living entrapment device.” Pauline Kael
“Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray become unforgettable, delicious clichés the minute they cock their eyebrows at one another in and around Billy Wilder’s shadowy L.A. interiors. But this film was also the moment, as the war still raged, when noir had its first real stiffy, basking in the cold-blooded algebra of two amoral bastards plotting the death of an innocent jerk — and as we all watch them do it, we hope it works.” Michael Atkinson
Series: Spring 2023 :: L.A. Noir