6. Double Indemnity
You might say that Double Indemnity's Phyllis Dietrichson is kind of impolite. She possibly took the role of a nurse for an ill woman in order to kill her and marry her rich husband. And she may have grown tired of that rich husband and seduced a schmuck insurance agent to strangle him in her car and stage his death as a suicide to fatten her wallet a bit more. Needless to say, she's trouble. Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder's classic noir from 1944, takes the viewer on a wild ride not of a whodunit or a howdunit, but more of a whydunit. Why does the mild-mannered Walter Neff resort to cold-blooded murder? Why is Phyllis' step-daughter so distanced from her family? It's a wonderful roller-coaster ride of emotions, evidence and circumstance as Neff initially focuses on outsmarting his sharp co-worker Barton Keyes, played by the legendary Edward G. Robinson. Through the cloak of witty banter, Neff eventually comes to the realization that his true nemesis is the woman who lured him into this mess in the first place: Phyllis Dietrichson. In the climax of the film, Walter gets Phyllis to confess to her diabolical scheme as if he were James Bond. She then shoots him in the gut, knocking him back but not out. He chides her and tells her to shoot again, but she becomes teary-eyed and says that she can't, as she realized that she loves him. Um, so this heartless wench who had her husband and his wife murdered, and plotted to have their child murdered, just realized that she loves Walter? Shouldn't she have considered that
before pumping a fatal slug of lead into his belly? If there's one lesson to this movie, it's that dames are fickle. And watch out for the ones with sexy ankles.