What is often missed about Double Indemnity is that it is a comedy, a dark, twisted, comedy. The world of most Film Noirs is an extreme version of our world–everything has been kicked up a notch. Billy Wilder just took it up an additional “notch.” It’s a parody of Film Noir made while Film Noir was still forming. Just count the number of times the word “baby” is used.
Double Indemnity has one of the most common Film Noir plots. In this version, sleazy (though not “evil”) insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) tries to renew a policy with an unpleasant man, but instead is seduced by his young wife, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck). The two decide to kill the older man, but his death only leads to suspicion and their eventual destruction. James Cain wrote the novella after he’d already used the plot in his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (replace the sleazy insurance man with a rough drifter and the two stories are close to matching). The first Postman film came out two years after Double Indemnity (a second version with Jack Nickolson and Jessica Lange came out in 1981). But The Postman tells the story with deadly seriousness.