Keyes finds out who the man was on the rear observation car with Dietrichson, and brings him to LA to interview him. Lola is also upset because she has broken up with her boyfriend Nino, and Neff is someone she feels like she can talk to. Neff starts to spend some time with Lola, because he doesn’t want her to go to the police. She also has always thought that Phyllis had something to do with her Mother’s death, because Phyllis was her nurse. Things start to get complicated for Neff when Lola shows up at his office Lola is not only unconvinced that her father’s death was accidental, she thinks Phyllis was behind it. He does wonder, however, why Dietrichson did not file a claim when he broke his leg. Keyes investigates, but at first seems resigned to the company having to pay the claim. It sounds crazy Keyes, but it’s true, so help me, I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. And yet, Keyes, as I was walking down the street to the drugstore, suddenly, it came over me that everything would go wrong. Nothing had slipped, nothing had been overlooked. Walter Neff: That was all there was to it. But Neff says he had this feeling that something was going to go wrong: Neff and Phyllis agree to have no contact until the heat dies down. Phyllis shows up at the predetermined jump point, and they put the actual body onto the tracks. Crutches and all, he makes it to the last car he has to get rid of the other passenger outside smoking, and then jumps off the train and onto the tracks, hoping it will look like he fell off the train. Neff boards the train, impersonating Dietrichson, careful to shield his face from those he sees. Dietrichson when Phyllis turns down a darkened side street. Phyllis drives him to the train station Neff is hiding in the back seat, and murders Mr. He breaks his leg in a unrelated accident, but still decides to go ahead with a train trip from LA to Palo Alto, where he plans to attend his college reunion at Stanford. They wait for the right time, about a month later, after they have tricked Mr. When she later shows up unexpectedly at his apartment, he agrees to not only help her, but to help her stage the murder to look like a train accident Neff knows this will make the insurance company have to pay double the benefit, which is where the term “double indemnity” comes from. Neff initially wants no part of this potential scheme.īut his lust for Phyllis overcomes his sense of judgment. Some further probing reveals that Phyllis only married her husband three years ago and had to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, with all of her husband’s money going to his daughter Lola (Jean Heather) upon his death, instead of to Phyllis. He suspects that she would like for her husband to meet an untimely end, and that she hopes to collect on the policy.
On Neff’s return visit, Phyllis expresses an interest in “accident insurance”, and wants to know if she can take out a policy like this on her husband without his knowing it. Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder. Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder. Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles. Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time. Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket. Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer? Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you? Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about 8:30. Sexual tension is in the air from the first moment she appears at the top of the stairs, and the dialogue between them contains some loaded and suggestive lines: Neff’s story starts with his call on Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), to get the signatures he needs for her and her husband to renew some automobile policies with his company. I killed him for money – and a woman – and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Robinson), who is both his friend and the Claims Adjuster whose job it is to investigate suspected fraudulent claims. He records the confession for Barton Keyes (Edward G. Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) is an insurance salesman the film opens with him returning to his office late at night, to record a confession on an old Dictaphone machine to his involvement in both a murder and a sordid attempt to defraud his own company. This 1944 film from Director Billy Wilder is considered to be one of the best examples of Film Noir.