A well-conceived murder always makes people applaud, but literary and artistic works have been proving to the audience that there is no perfect murder in this world, because there is always a character who is good at reasoning coexisting with the murder case, the "detective" in the story. Characters (professional or amateur) can always grasp the key loopholes after they have been stripped, deduce the entire crime process, and then surface the criminals.
Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" is reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Phone Murder," both of which present the criminal at the outset, allowing the audience to follow the criminal's point of view through the entire planning and execution of the crime The process; criminals can be said to be high IQ, unreservedly explain a puzzle carefully designed by themselves. The audience not only admires the meticulousness and ingenuity of the criminal's thinking, but also starts to think about where the detectives should break it. It can be said that such a narrative method has reached a certain height in driving the audience into the situation, making the audience empathize with both positive and negative characters.
"Double Indemnity" draws attention from the very beginning through such a narrative method. Although the black and white film may not contain as many elements as the color film, it does not make a suspense film much inferior. Billy Wilder's other "Witness for the Prosecution" is also a black and white film, and it has a high status by the users of Zhihu. Of course, , that is indeed a masterpiece of suspenseful reasoning. After all, it is a story written by Agatha, and it will never disappoint. It can be seen that the plot is the top priority of suspense films.
When you see the name of the movie, you probably know that this case should be related to insurance. Insurance fraud and murder is a very common theme. The temptation of money is infinite, and it is not uncommon to get insurance compensation through murder in reality. The case of murdering a wife and cheating on security in Thailand is an example. I don’t know whether reality inspired the creation of virtual works or whether virtual works inspired people in reality.
****Spoilers begin***
Back to the plot of the film. The male protagonist, an insurance salesman, meets his wife at home alone while visiting a client, and falls in love with her at first sight. This wife, that is, our heroine, wants to murder her unfaithful husband in order to get insurance compensation. Her intention was seen by the male protagonist who sold the insurance, but the male protagonist was bewitched by women and money and decided to conspire with her. Plan a seemingly perfect scam plan.
First of all, the male protagonist asked the customer to sign the auto insurance renewal clause, and hidden a contract of accident insurance that the customer clearly refused to buy, and asked him to sign it together. The customer did not suspect him and was fooled. This reminds me of an episode of "Large-scale Social Security Education TV Series" and "Wulin Biography", Guo Furong asked Bai Zhantang to sign a divorce letter to get rid of the previous marriage contract due to farce, and asked Mo Xiaobei to put the divorce letter in the first place. Under the homework signed by the parents, I asked Lao Bai to sign it together, but Lao Bai saw through her tricks and deliberately did something bad, and wrote Lu Xiucai's name on the divorce letter, so that Xiao Guo could not steal the chicken and lose the rice. Bai deserves to be an old-fashioned old man. Therefore, you must read the content before signing a word, because you never know what kind of documents someone else has sent you to fish in troubled waters. In the movie, that client is doomed to death after he stumbles into signing that accident insurance contract.
Then came the execution of the murder. The two agreed on a secret code and rehearsed it several times. As an insurance practitioner, the male protagonist naturally knows many ways of insurance. Accident insurance stipulates that if the insured dies unexpectedly, he can get a maximum compensation of 50,000 yuan. If he dies while riding a train, there will be a hidden compensation of 50,000 yuan. , a total of 100,000 yuan, which is the so-called double compensation. The concept of double indemnity is very common in accident insurance, which usually means that the insured can get double the insurance money in the event of an accident while riding a specific vehicle. The male protagonist carefully planned the murder. Since he wants to die, let him die more valuable. It happened that the client was going out of town at the end of the month, and he had to drive, of course, the hostess had to be responsible for persuading her husband to take the train instead.
The murder duo are extremely cautious and never meet in public, except to discuss and rehearse the murder plan, they usually only meet in a supermarket for a secret meeting. On this day, the hostess brought bad news. It turned out that the client accidentally broke his leg and was unable to travel. The two had to temporarily put their plans on hold. But the twists and turns, another day, the male protagonist received an emergency call from the female protagonist at work, and learned that the client was going to set off for the train with a cane that night, and the two immediately decided to restart the plan. Since there are colleagues around, the male protagonist can't say it clearly, but the two only got the time, place, signal and clothes color right, and everything is ready, which shows that they are already fully prepared.
The male protagonist went home and began to make some alibi for himself, as well as wearing clothes of similar colors as the client's to disguise later, and then set off secretly and hid in the car of the female protagonist's house. The female protagonist drove the client to the train station and gave a signal to act on the way; when he arrived at the railway station, the male protagonist had transformed himself into a "customer" on crutches. Not long after the "client" got on the train, he "stumbled" and fell to his death. In fact, of course, our male protagonist nimbly jumped off the track from the terrace of the train, placed the client's body on the rails with the waiting female protagonist, and then Drive away without knowing it.
After the accident, both the police and the colleague with the sharpest sense of security fraud believed it was just an accident. However, the insurance company executives were very angry. After all, double compensation is a huge loss. Unless the insured commits suicide, the insurance company does not need to pay. But the "detective" colleague showed that suicide is impossible. There is not much maneuverability and necessity to commit suicide by jumping from a car. Just when the murder duo thought everything was going well, a colleague discovered something strange: Why did the client break his leg after buying accident insurance but didn't make a claim? Unless he didn't know he had insurance. This was a major loophole in the murder plan, and an accident that thwarted their plan, except that they didn't expect that there would be eyewitnesses on the train who accosted the hero, and the car that got off the train almost failed. , which hindered their murders, big or small. Unpredictable things happen, which is why we say there is no perfect murder, because plans always fail to unpredictable weather.
Out of trust in the male protagonist, my colleague initially only suspected the widow of the deceased, who was the female protagonist. Later, with the testimony of witnesses on the train, the colleague gradually clarified the process of committing the crime, and deduced that the heroine and another man planned all this, but he guessed the identity of the man wrong.
At this time, there was also a rift between the male protagonist and the female protagonist. The female protagonist actually had another plan and planned to take the insurance money alone. The two had a fight, and the female protagonist relented for a while, and was finally shot and killed by the male protagonist. The injured male protagonist forced his way back to the office and began to confess the entire crime in front of the microphone, but his colleagues who had discovered the truth were waiting outside the door with someone...
****SPOILER END***
"Detective" colleagues have a classic line: murder's never perfect…when two people are involved, it's usually sooner. …they may think it's twice as safe because there are two of them, but…it's 10 times twice as dangerous…they've committed a murder and it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line. And it's a one- way trip, and the last stop is the cemetery. Two people committing a crime brings double risk, double compensation becomes double arrest, murder is not if you want to withdraw, you can withdraw if you want, murder duo can only bind each other and walk together grave.
In this film, Barbara Stanwyck, who plays the heroine, is undoubtedly eye-catching. Her frowns and smiles in the film are full of charm. The character of this femme fatale has both a sinister smile, a greedy look, and a pitiful look. The disguise of her, but it did not make people feel bored. The audience will always soften when they see the tears and tenderness in her eyes before her death. As a famous Hollywood movie star, S's beauty is absolutely up to standard. Even in black and white movies, you can still clearly see her creamy skin, delicate face, watery eyes and shiny hair. The whole person seems to have a soft light. Filters, the same is true of Marilyn Monroe's presentation in black and white films, people can't help but sigh that in that era, they had already achieved the ultimate maintenance. S has been married to Robert Taylor, the protagonist of "Blue Bridge". She still loves the man after the divorce, and has been single since then, but the man's life is poor. 83 years old. Interestingly, although the male protagonist of this film is one year younger than S, he lived to the same age as her and died at the age of 83, but the two do not seem to have much intersection. As for the supporting character in the movie - the "Detective" colleague is a celebrity, "the greatest actor of the century", a Romanian who was persecuted (probably ethnic oppression, but I don't know much about Romania's history in the 1900s). How to understand) Immigrated to the United States, relying on personal struggle to become a movie celebrity, it is said that his experience represents the realization of the American dream, and he lived to be 80 years old. However, none of the actors in this film lived as long as the director of the film, and Billy Wilder lived to be 95 years old. Anyway, everyone is happy.
In fact, the plot of this film gave me a little inspiration about insurance companies. The indemnity requirements they set are usually so harsh that they are simply "mission" impossible. As happened in the movie, the insured has to agree to buy a high accident insurance, and it has to be within a certain period of time and on certain occasions. Accidental casualties, the probability is only about "one out of I don't know how many billions" as the "detective" colleague said. Unless there is an artificial coincidence, there is no possibility of it happening at all, and the only way to meet the insurance requirements is to resort to smart murder, right? Since there is no perfect murder, we believe that the murderer is usually brought to justice quickly, so insurance companies still do not pay. From this point of view, insurance companies are really sure to make money without losing money. No wonder the executives in the movie were shocked and disappointed when they learned that they were going to lose money. After all, how can insurance companies actually pay large amounts of money? This is a joke. In recent years, it is said that many cultural practitioners have switched to selling insurance. Could it be that they have also been inspired and discovered the beauty of insurance? I think I can start thinking about it too.
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