Strangers On a Train

 

Alfred Hitchcock with his daughter Patricia

Hitchcock with Farley Granger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN               B                                                                                    USA  (101 mi)  1951  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

Never as popular as Hitchcock’s more star-driven material, but this is one nasty piece of work, ultimately carrying extensive psychological implications, accentuating the irrational impulses that lie just under the surface in all of us, enlarging and expanding them into something larger-than-life, driven by an unsuppressed inner drive and personal obsession, with catastrophic consequences.  In this case, an ordinary man who feels he hasn’t accomplished anything in his life is driven to murder, as if that act calls attention to himself and somehow makes him important.  Living in the shadow of his mother and overly dominant father, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) has been forced to repress his inner impulses and desires, expelled from three colleges for drinking and gambling, leading a frivolous, overly protected life of aimlessness and leisure, almost as if conjured from the imagination of Truman Capote.  A chance meeting on a train with a total stranger opens the floodgates, taking full advantage, finally “doing something” for a change.  The man he meets is Guy Haines (Farley Granger), already intimately familiar with all facets of his life from having seen his picture cavorting with wealthy socialites in the society pages of the newspapers, as he’s a top-ranked amateur tennis player who’s divorcing his adulterous wife while romancing a Senator’s daughter, trading in his provincial small-town life for one that exudes power and prestige, ambitiously climbing the social ladder, perhaps even entering into the world of politics.  Enthralled by his success and public esteem, Bruno wants to share some of the glamor, first prying into his personal affairs, then completely out of the blue Bruno thinks he can help Guy, proposing a hare-brained idea of exchanging perfect murders, suggesting he would murder his ex-wife while Guy would murder his father, completely stymying police, knowing they each have no connection to the victims, as they don’t even know each other and have no motive for the murders, while also ensuring full-proof alibis.  Guy flippantly ignores such a ludicrous idea as utterly ridiculous, presented as a decent guy, but his subconscious wants to murder his irresponsible, no-good wife, and this dark side of him is channeled through the doppelganger of a nihilistic killer, where Bruno kicks into high gear, given his marching orders, finally offering meaning to his life, quickly carrying out his murder by strangulation, shown with extreme detail at an amusement park, then suffocatingly hounds Guy to carry out his end of the bargain, with that pressure drastically altering his life with increasing anxiety and dread.  Prior to this, the only other Hitchcock film to show a sustained murder sequence onscreen was a knifing sequence in Blackmail (1929) that was largely depicted in shadows behind a curtain, carried out by Anny Ondra, Hitchcock’s first icy blonde, in response to a sexual assault.  The vast majority of Hitchcock murders occur either offscreen or are suggested by a brief flash of a gun.  Hitchcock adds an overtly gay element to Bruno’s character, the male counterpart to the female homoeroticism in Rebecca (1940), viewed at the time as a social deviant, already submerged into the margins of society, basically suppressing his inner desires, where he is routinely overlooked and made to feel invisible, denied free expression.  Like Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) or Brandon Shaw in ROPE (1948), Bruno is a tortured and neurotic soul, the product of a doting and dizzyingly eccentric mother (Marion Lorne) and a dysfunctional childhood.  The act of murder is his sexual release, which is why he’s so drawn to the idea, an embodiment of the kinds of submerged desires that are subversive and dangerous and exist in all of us, yet they usually remain under the surface as idyll daydreams.  Guy recognizes early on that the man is an uncontrollable psychopath and tries to keep safely distanced from him, yet Bruno’s stalking presence tightens the noose around his own neck, perpetually joined at the hip, becoming one and the same, unable to shake him, like a shadow following him wherever he goes, seen standing like a statue on the massive white marble steps in front of the Jefferson Memorial, invariably threatening to implicate him in the murder.  While he had nothing to do with it, Guy is made to feel like he was the one who carried out the murder.  Hitchcock was particularly inspired by the cinematic possibilities of exploring dual criss-crossing relationships, which was such a prominent influence in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), but also Psycho (1960) and FRENZY (1972), while using a metaphor for cinema much beloved by Hitchcock (and DeMille), the moving train, giving way to one that would be popular with Hitchcock’s followers in the 70’s and 80’s, an amusement park ride.    

Adapting Patricia Highsmith’s first novel in 1950, acquired for the minimal industry fee of $7500, the film had a troubled background with multiple screenwriters, starting with Whitfield Cook, who initially converted Bruno from an alcoholic to a spoiled, overly repressed mama’s boy, adding a homoerotic subtext, then bringing in Raymond Chandler, thinking he needed a prestigious big name to sell the picture, but he and Hitchcock were continually at odds and never worked well together.  Some believe this film is fundamentally about homosexuality, and that the criss-cross agreement was never really about murder, but sex, and Chandler had a problem writing a screenplay with gay implications, while that was essentially what attracted Hitchcock to the material.  Additionally, Chandler relied upon realism throughout his career, where plausibility matters, yet Hitchcock could care less, finding it cinematically intriguing, where in his mind it plays out like a wish-fulfillment fantasy.  Turned down by Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, and Dashiell Hammett, who were not enamored by the story, Hitchcock finally tried Ben Hecht, but he was too busy, instead recommending his assistant, Czenzi Ormonde, who had never written a screenplay, but she collaborated with Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, and production associate Barbara Keon, bringing substantially new life into the story.  While this is subversive filmmaking of the highest order, dialogue remains weak and the human element is altogether missing.  In addition, of the two lead characters one of them never really comes to life, with Farley Granger never once feeling substantial or that he matters, instead feeling vacuously wooden, out-acted by the more flamboyant Walker throughout, as Bruno is easily the more interesting character, with Hitchcock clearly identifying with his madness, becoming one of the iconic Hitchcock villains.  Yet despite the unsavory subject matter, it’s a fairly conventional style, with routine movie music written by Dimitri Tiomkin, nothing out of the ordinary, shot in an expressionist black and white style by Robert Burks, who does provide a few novel touches at the beginning and at the end, receiving the only Academy Award nomination, but most all the secondary characters feel lifeless and inert, particularly Leo G. Carroll as Senator Morton and Ruth Roman as socialite girlfriend Anne Morton, where watching them is like watching paint dry.  Hitchcock does add an intriguing element in Anne’s younger sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock, the director’s own daughter), who seems to thrive on bad taste and unsavory content, like a black sheep in the family, yet she physically bears a strange resemblance to the murdered wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers, though the studio changed her name to Laura Elliott), playing on Bruno’s fractured consciousness, figuring prominently in the outcome.  Extended screen time is given to filming a completely amateurish tennis match, Hitchcock’s favorite sport, apparently, and a visual metaphor for the entire back and forth structure of the film, yet it leaves the film in a state of suspended animation, generating no excitement or tension, though supposedly wrought with tension as Guy has an underlying motive to end the match early, as he’s on to the devious actions of Bruno, hoping to prevent him from planting incriminating evidence against Guy at the scene of the crime, as he has Guy’s personally engraved cigarette lighter from their initial train encounter.  This sequence is easily the weakest element of the film, where watching the match is like watching the inevitability of time passing, mirroring the plight of Bruno, who arrives at the amusement park early and has to wait until nightfall, growing increasingly impatient (extended even further when he drops the lighter down a sewer drain, frantically calling for help in retrieving it), needing the cover of darkness to carry out his dastardly scheme.  Hitchcock may have felt his back and forth editing strategy was ramping up the suspense by keeping viewers at bay, but this entire section falls flat and is only recharged once the match is over and Guy makes his way to the amusement park, inadvertently bringing with him an accumulating network of police that follow him every step of the way. 

Easily the best sequence is the murder itself, which comes early in this film, where even the opening sequence identifying the two lead characters is shrouded in mystery, showing only their shoes as they walk onto the train and sit down, where their shoes inadvertently touch, and suddenly the story kicks into life, with each politely introducing themselves.  While the film explores dark moral boundaries, the film differs radically from the novel, where Guy is actually blackmailed into killing Bruno’s father, ravaged by guilt afterwards, losing everything, a much more devastating outcome, but not something that motion picture studios would allow from their leading men, coinciding with a dubious morality purge during the wave of anticommunism from McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting and the heightened conservatism of the Eisenhower years when homosexuality was not only considered taboo, but a crime, as much a threat to society as communism.  Guy has an emotionally distraught scene with his spiteful ex-wife Miriam that does not go well, hoping she would agree to a divorce, which she had been insisting upon all along, but suddenly changes course and refuses to cooperate, blatantly sabotaging his plans, making things as difficult for him as possible, which he doesn’t take well, growing visibly upset in public, making threats against her.  This opens the door for Bruno, who follows her out to the amusement park, accompanied by two men, joining them from afar as they move from event to event, with Miriam picking up on his nefarious presence through steady eye contact, actually flirting with him, thoroughly enjoying herself in a night on the town.  The scene of the film is the Tunnel of Love, a boat ride in the amusement park where the opposite shore entitled Magic Isle has a reputation of being a lover’s lane, yet shadows are formed on the walls of the tunnel as they approach.  Miriam is on the first boat with two male friends while Bruno trails behind on another boat.  As Bruno approaches Miriam’s boat, we see his shadow overpowers and actually “swallows” Miriam’s shadow, creating an absurd sense of menace, adding a sinister implication of danger and lurking fear.  What follows is never transparent, as the scene of Miriam’s strangulation is portrayed through the view of the reflections of her glasses which have dropped to the ground, drowned out by the incessant sounds of the carnival organ.  This intentional distortion may symbolize Bruno’s psychotic mind while the consuming darkness of the image adds an elusive element of deviousness and uncertainty.  Furthermore, this shot conveys the ghastly horror that we are witness to, hearing her male friends playfully calling out for her, unsuspecting the presence of evil lurking nearby, discovering her lifeless body on the ground as Bruno quickly makes his escape.  Hitchcock is quoted as saying, “Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders.”  This scene perfectly encapsulates that description, as does the finale, returning to the scene of the crime, with Guy in hot pursuit of Bruno.  Hitchcock places the drama on a merry-go-round carousel that suddenly snaps, rapidly increasing out of control to a delirious speed, with the two rivals struggling to gain the upper hand, two men locked in an embrace with homoerotic implications, while innocent children are screaming in panic.  Hitchcock has a diminutive man actually crawl under the speeding carousel as the scene is being shot in order to access the controls, jeopardizing his life in the process, an act he regretted afterwards, as it was too close for comfort.  However, Hitchcock’s extraordinary visual composition and equally brilliant editing compacts the final action, heightening the emotional tension and suspense, drawing viewers into the center of the maelstrom, bringing the film to a jarring conclusion.  This film had a huge impact on Wim Wenders, who largely used it as an American reference point in making The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund) (1977), with murder figuring prominently in both, each relying upon source material from Patricia Highsmith, yet Wenders’ absurdly expressionist stylishness lacks the psychological precision that drives the Hitchcock film, maintaining more of an existential mindset, which is typically European.  Sadly, Robert Walker died shortly after completing principal photography on the film at the age of 32, suffering an adverse reaction to a sedative, coupled with drinking, leading to an acute allergic reaction to the drug, unfortunately cutting his life all too short. 

Note

Hitchcock’s cameo comes early in the film, seen boarding a train carrying a double bass.

'Strangers on a Train': A Technically Perfect Psychological ...  François Truffaut interview with Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock by François Truffaut, published in 1967, from Cinephilia & Beyond

F.T.: Well, this brings us to 1950, when your situation is any­thing but brilliant. It’s very much the same as in 1933, when, right after Waltzes from Vienna, your prestige was re-established by The Man Who Knew Too Much. Now again, the consec­utive failures of Under Capricorn and Stage Fright will be followed by a spectacular come­back via Strangers on a Train.
A.H.:You might say that I again applied that old “run for cover” rule. For your information, Strangers on a Train wasn’t an assignment, but a novel that I selected myself. I felt this was the right kind of material for me to work with.

I’ve read it; it’s a good novel, but there must have been lots of problems in adapting it to the screen.
There were-and that raises another point. Whenever I collaborate with a writer who, like myself, specializes in mystery, thriller, or suspense, things don’t seem to work out too well.

You’re referring to Raymond Chan­dler?
Right; our association didn’t work out at all. We’d sit together and I would say, “Why not do it this way?” and he’d answer, “Well, if you can puzzle it out, what do you need me for?” The work he did was no good and I ended up with Czenzi Ormonde, a woman writer who was one of Ben Hecht’s assistants. When I com­pleted the treatment, the head of Warner’s tried to find someone to do the dialogue, and very few writers would touch it. None of them thought it was any good.

I’m not at all surprised; it’s often oc­curred to me that had I read the story, the chances are I wouldn’t have cared for it. Here is a case where you really have to see the picture. As a matter of fact, I think that the same story made by someone else wouldn’t have been any good at all. Particularly when you consider the many Hitchcock emulators whose attempts at the thriller genre have been disastrous.
It’s been my good fortune to have something of a monopoly on the genre: nobody else seems to take much interest in the rules for that form.

What rules?
I’m talking about the rules of sus­pense. That’s why I’ve more or less had the field to myself. Selznick claimed I was the only direc­tor whom he could trust completely, but when I worked for him, he complained about what he called my “goddamn jigsaw cutting.” I used to shoot the one piece of film in such a way that no one else could put the pieces together prop­erly; the only way they could be edited was to follow exactly what I had in mind in the shoot­ing stages. Selznick comes from the school of film-makers who like to have lots of footage to play around with in the cutting room. Working as I do, you’re sure that no one in the studio is going to take over and ruin your film. That’s the reason I won out in the argument over Suspi­cion.

One senses that control in your pic­tures; it’s obvious that each shot has been made in a specific way, from a specific angle, and to run for a specific length of time. The only ex­ceptions, possibly, are courtroom scenes or scenes that require crowds.
That’s inevitable, it can’t be helped. That’s what happened with the tennis match in Strangers on a Train, and it shows the risk in overshooting material. There’s too much foot­age for you to handle by yourself; you turn it over to the cutter to sort it out, but you never know what’s been left unused. That’s the risk.

One of the best things in Strangers on a Train is the exposition, with the follow shots on feet going one way and then the other. There are also the crisscrossing rails. There’s a sort of symbolic effect in the way they meet and separate, and that’s also true of the direction arrows in I Confess. You often open your pic­tures on a symbolic note.
The direction arrows exist in Quebec; they use them to indicate one-way streets. The shots of the rails in Strangers on a Train were the logical extension of the motif with the feet. Practically, I couldn’t have done anything else.

Why not?
The camera practically grazed the rails because it couldn’t be raised; you see, I didn’t want to go higher until the feet of Farley Gran­ger and Robert Walker bump together in the railroad car.

That’s what I mean. That accidental collision of the two men’s feet is the point of departure for their whole relationship, and the concept is sustained by deliberately refraining from showing their faces up to that point. In the same light the separating rails suggest the idea of divergent courses-two different ways of life.
Naturally, there is that as well. Isn’t it a fascinating design? One could study it forever.

In several of your pictures, I’ve no­ticed, you will enhance a surprise situation with an additional twist; in other words-and I’m not thinking only of Psycho—you will use a bit of trickery to create a small suspenseful diversion so that the surprise that comes immediately af­terward is even more startling.
What do you have in mind?

Well, in Strangers on a Train, Farley Granger agrees to kill Robert Walker’s father, although, in fact, he really intends to warn the old man against his son. So Granger breaks into the house at night; the father’s room is upstairs. Now, if he simply tiptoed up the staircase, the public would try to figure out what’s going to happen next, and they might even guess that upstairs Granger will find Bruno instead of his father. So you dispose of that anticipation by creating a suspenseful diversion in the form of a huge dog in the middle of the staircase. In this way the question becomes: Will the dog let Far­ley Granger get by without biting him or won’t he? Isn’t that right?
Yes, in that scene we first have a sus­pense effect, through the threatening dog, and later on we have a surprise effect when the per­son in the room turns out to be Robert Walker instead of his father. I remember we went to a lot of trouble getting that dog to lick Farley Granger’s hand.

I believe you used a trick shot there. Isn’t the image slowed down?
Yes, I think that’s so.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the picture is the bold manipulation of time, the way in which it’s contracted and dilated. First, there’s Farley Granger’s frantic haste to win his tennis match, and then Robert Walker’s panic when he accidentally drops Granger’s lighter in a manhole. In both these scenes, time is tightly compressed-like a lemon. Then, after Walker gets to the island, you let go, because he can’t proceed with his plan to frame Granger in broad daylight. So when he asks one of the men in the amusement park, “At what time does it get dark around here?” everything is decompressed. Real-life time takes over while he waits for nightfall. That dramatic play with time is really stunning. On the other hand, I have some reservations on the final scene, when the carrousel runs amok, though I understand the reason for it. I guess you needed a paroxysm, is that it?
That’s true. After so many colorful parts, it seems to me it would have been poor form not to have, at this point, what musicians refer to as a coda. But my hands still sweat when I think of that scene today. You know, that little man actually crawled under that spinning car­rousel. If he’d raised his head by an inch, he’d have been killed. I’ll never do anything like that again.

But when the carrousel breaks…
That was a miniature blown up on a big screen. The big difficulty with that scene was that the screen had to be angled differently for each shot. We had to move the projector every time the angle changed because many of the shots of the merry-go-round were low cam­era setups. We spent a lot of time setting the screen in line with the camera lens. Anyway, for the carrousel breakdown we used a miniature blown up on a big screen and we put live people in front of the screen.

There’s a certain resemblance between the situations of the heroes of Strangers on a Train and A Place in the Sun. I couldn’t help wondering whether the Patricia Highsmith novel was influenced by Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
It’s quite possible. As I see it, the flaws of Strangers on a Train were the ineffectiveness of the two main actors and the weakness of the final script. If the writing of the dialogue had been better, we’d have had stronger characteri­zations. The great problem with this type of pic­ture, you see, is that your main characters sometimes tend to become mere figures.

Algebraic figures? You’ve just raised what I believe is the key dilemma for all direc­tors: a strong film situation involving dull char­acters, or else the characters are subtle, but the situation in which they move is a static one. All your movies, I think, are hinged on strong situ­ations, and Strangers on a Train is actually mapped out like a diagram. This degree of styli­zation is so exciting to the mind and to the eye that it’s fascinating even to a mass audience.
I was quite pleased with the over-all form of the film and with the secondary char­acters. I particularly liked the woman who was murdered; you know, the bitchy wife who worked in a record shop; Bruno’s mother was good, too-she was just as crazy as her son.

The only flaw, to my mind, is the film’s leading lady, Ruth Roman.
Well, she was Warner Brothers’ lead­ing lady, and I had to take her on because I had no other actors from that company. But I must say that I wasn’t too pleased with Farley Gran­ger; he’s a good actor, but I would have liked to see William Holden in the part because he’s stronger. In this kind of story the stronger the hero, the more effective the situation.

Yet, since Granger was appealing in Rope and not particularly appealing in Strangers on a Train, I assumed this was intentional, that you meant him to be seen as an opportunistic playboy. By contrast, Robert Walker gives a rather poetic portrayal; he’s undoubtedly more attractive. There is a distinct impression that you preferred the villain.
Of course, no doubt about it.

In many of your pictures-and Stran­gers on a Train is a case in point-there are, aside from coincidences and implausibles, many elements that are arbitrary and unjustified. And yet, in the light of a cinematic logic that is strictly personal, you impose them in such a way that once they’re on the screen, these are the very elements that become the film’s strong points.
The cinematic logic is to follow the rules of suspense. Here we have one of those stories that automatically bring on that old com­plaint: “But why didn’t he tell the police all about it?” Don’t forget that we’ve clearly established the reasons for which he can’t go to the police.

There can be no argument about that. This picture, just like Shadow of a Doubt, is sys­tematically built around the figure “two.” Here again, both characters might very well have had the same name. Whether it’s Guy or Bruno, it’s obviously a single personality split in two.
That’s right. Though Bruno has killed Guy’s wife, for Guy, it’s just as if he had com­mitted the murder himself. As for Bruno, he’s clearly a psychopath.

Double Indemnity

Barbara Stanwyck speaking to Billy Wilder

Sitting outside the office, Raymond Chandler’s appearance in Double Indemnity

DOUBLE INDEMNITY                   A                    

USA  (108 mi)  1944  d:  Billy Wilder

It has all the characteristics of the classic forties film as I respond to it.  It’s in black and white, it has fast badinage, it’s very witty, a story from the classic age.  It has Edward G. Robinson, and Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and the tough voice-over.  It has brilliantly written dialogue, and the perfect score by Miklos Rosza.  It’s Billy Wilder’s best movie…practically anybody’s best movie.    —Woody Allen

Author James M. Cain had success in 1934 with his book The Postman Always Rings Twice, while Double Indemnity, continuing ruminations on the same themes of infidelity and adultery, was published two years later in serial magazine installments.  It would be seven more years before Austrian émigré Billy Wilder, assisted on the screenplay by Raymond Chandler, would take the reins in creating what is arguably the seminal example of Film Noir.  Between the Great Depression and the Cold War, especially following the outbreak of World War II, American films created a new style, both visual and narrative, largely based on American crime fiction of the 30’s where the subject is crime and its psychological implications, including gruff, world weary loners who have had their share of bad luck, hard liquor, and failed romances, exuding an existential despair shared by many of the disillusioned returning war vets who found life at home much harder than when they left it.  Ironically, many of its leading exponents would be former European directors who escaped German persecution, like Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, André de Toth, Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, or Robert Zinnemann, all of whom were well versed in Berlin’s Ufa Studio of German Expressionism and understood the dark psychological state of being trapped by forces larger than themselves, as each experienced this personally in their own lives.  Film Noir may have had its origins with films like STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940) with the mysterious stranger Peter Lorre, or consensus audience favorite THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), introducing Humphrey Bogart as hard boiled detective Sam Spade, surrounded by a cast of exotic characters.  But DOUBLE INDEMNITY may be the granddaddy of them all as it appears to be the first to consolidate what is commonly known as noir style, which deploys many notable features, such as dark lighting that accentuates the contrasts between black and white, grimly realistic black and white cinematography, including impressionistic night time city landscapes inhabited by nocturnal creatures who have trouble sleeping at night, cool seductive femme fatale women and men momentarily caught off guard by their sexual allure that feels more like entrapment, tough, brooding voice-overs or sparse but suggestive dialogue punctuated by cynicism and sexual innuendo, a ruthless desire to greedily achieve the American Dream with plans that go awry due to double crosses, misplaced loyalty, and betrayal, oftentimes leading to murder, with a central character usually ending up wracked by guilt or dead. 

First and foremost there is this marvelous script that runs like a locomotive through the entire movie, told almost entirely in flashback, a film beloved by Wilder himself “because it had the fewest takes, and because it was taut and moved in the staccato manner of Cain’s novel.”  Fred MacMurray plays Walter Neff, an unsuspecting insurance salesman who’s usually pretty confident about himself, which is apparent when he first sets eyes on blond bombshell Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson as she’s standing on top of a staircase dressed only in a towel, claiming she’s just been sunbathing, to which he amusingly quips “No pigeons around, I hope.”  Despite the obvious, what catches his eye is her ankle bracelet, as if this itself is suggestive of illicit sexual provocation.  It should be noted that Charles Brackett, who scripted Wilder’s first two Hollywood films, refused to work on this film due to “moral grounds.”  Raymond Chandler was never a fan of James Cain and was actually contemptuously dismissive, as the two barely spoke to one another, but the script remained loyal to his original intentions.  Even Wilder acknowledged that most of the dialogue that makes the film so memorable was largely Chandler’s.  Phyllis’s curiosity about obtaining an accidental death insurance policy without her husband’s knowledge piques Neff’s professional cynicism, as he immediately senses foul play and barks his way out the door.  When she arrives at his doorstep shortly thereafter, claiming he forgot his hat, it’s evident he didn’t forget his hat.  But after a few shots of bourbon, they’re in each other’s arms.  This is as steamy as it got in the 1940’s, as sex and nudity were not on display until European films of the 50’s and 60’s.  Instead kisses and crackling dialogue would have to suffice.  In no time, Phyllis positions herself as the offended party, claiming marital neglect, while Neff works the numbers on an insurance swindle known as double indemnity, a policy that allows the highest cash payout based on the least likely causes of death.  While not as steamy as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), it follows a similar femme fatale scenario of luring an unsuspecting foil via her sexual prowess to get whatever she wants, where all the time poor Walter is led to believe he’s getting what he wants, the money and the girl.  Simply put, the girl has other plans. 

This may be Stanwyck’s most boldly provocative role, as she accomplishes the most with the least amount of effort, never raising her voice, never pleading with or browbeating her man, using legs and looks instead of showing a lot of skin, never resorting to caricature.  Instead she’s as smart as any man, operates by her own rules and is savvy enough to keep most of what she knows to herself while at the same time allowing the man to have enough of what he thinks he wants to keep him happy.  Neff is completely enamored by Phyllis, hoodwinked, sideswiped, harpooned into continually calling her “baby,” showering her with kisses until one point when he finally figures it out and we hear him mutter to himself as he’s walking down the street, “How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”  Throughout much of this film, it’s as if one hears the voice of Humphrey Bogart speaking, but it is Barbara Stanwyck doing the talking, as she is the one that always remains cool and collected under fire, never breaking a sweat, never acknowledging fear, maintaining her assertiveness throughout.  Pauline Kael describes her as follows:  “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.”  Needless to say, the film has its devout followers.   

Neff’s insurance boss is Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes, the guy whose job it is to spot phony claims, and he does so with relish, with the same zeal and conviction displayed in criminal gangland mentality from his earlier pictures, though now spent scouring claims searching for every legal angle that casts suspicion on fraud.  He’s a crack investigator who follows every clue and is renowned for his meticulous scrutiny of following the facts, but also a father figure who has taken Neff under his wing.  His character is highly reminiscent of Welles’ later film THE STRANGER (1946), where Robinson is a War Crimes investigator hunting down Welles who’s a suspected Nazi collaborator.  He utilizes this same cunning to break the case down little by little, where Neff all but feels the noose tightening around his neck.  The case has him muttering to himself after awhile, losing all personal conviction once he realizes his perfect plan and his girl have both turned sour.  It is Robinson’s revelations at the end that drive the finale, filled with typical Wilder-driven atmosphere and suspense, but also a kind of dread with having to come to terms with it all, having to stare into the face of one’s own disillusionment.  The film is particularly influential in presenting an entire feature length movie where the two main box office attractions remain scheming and manipulative right up until the end, where both remain outside all moral boundaries, a place where John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards exists in John Ford’s infamous western THE SEARCHERS (1956).