Some Like It Wilder

by Gene D. Phillips

  One criticism of the picture, which originated with the French film historian Georges Sadoul, centers on the character of Mouche. After she fails to make a bargain with Rommel for her brother’s freedom, she offers herself to Lieutenant Schwegler, who deludes her by making empty promises to save her brother just to manipulate her into a sexual liaison. Sadoul was outraged that Mouche personified France “as a softhearted whore at the beck and call of Nazi supermen” like Schwegler. Sarris comments that Sadoul’s criticism is symptomatic of the way that Wilder “has been penalized for being more honest and more open about the realities of human sexuality than most of his Hollywood colleagues.”31

  It is Lieutenant Schwegler who discovers Davos’s body among the debris in the hostelry’s basement; he rightly guesses that Bramble is masquerading as the deceased Davos. So Bramble is forced to liquidate him. Bramble is convinced that it is his duty to relay the strategic information about Rommel’s supply depots to the high command at the British headquarters in Cairo. Mouche enables Bramble to make good his getaway and carry out his mission by taking the blame for Schwegler’s murder. Rommel suspects that Mouche killed Schwegler to punish him for duping her into a sexual relationship. He tells her, “To prove to you that we are not the Huns you think we are, you will be tried according to your own French law—the Napoleonic Code.” Rommel presides over a court of inquiry, which finds her guilty, and she is summarily executed by a firing squad. Pace Sadoul, Mouche is one of Wilder’s most admirable heroines, since she valiantly sacrifices her life for the war effort.

  Montgomery’s rout of Rommel is presented in a montage. It consists mainly of Harrison’s skillful manipulation of stock newsreel footage, but it is nonetheless quite effective. (Incidentally, Mander looked all the more impressive in the part of Colonel Fitzhume because of his coincidental resemblance to General Montgomery, who appears in the footage of the battle sequence.) And so on November 12, 1942, the British army comes back to Sidi Halfaya. Bramble returns to the little desert inn as a newly made officer in Montgomery’s Eighth Army. The gutless Farid has restored the portrait of Queen Victoria to its former place of prominence in the hotel lobby. Farid tells Bramble of Mouche’s execution.

  In the film’s source play, Hotel Imperial, the hero arrives in time to save the heroine from being executed by the enemy general. But Wilder rejected a contrived, last-minute rescue for Mouche. He consigned her to a tragic death, which occasions Bramble’s stirring eulogy. Bramble places on her grave the pearl-handled parasol she had always wanted, which he had intended to give to her personally as a present. He addresses her spirit, concluding, “Don’t worry, Mouche, we’re after them now. We’re going to blast the blazes out of them.”

  In directing Five Graves, Wilder made a film for the eye as well as for the ear, as exemplified by the movie’s visual metaphors. In several scenes Wilder had Stroheim carry a fly swatter, which takes on symbolic implications in various situations. Several reviewers called it a riding crop, but the script identifies it as a “fly swisher.” It resembles a whisk broom with a foot-long handle, “which Rommel flicks repeatedly to shoo away flies.” Rommel at times wields the fly swatter as if it were a royal scepter, implying to all and sundry that he is a person of power and authority. At one point he employs the fly swatter as a whip, to strike Mouche across the face while he is interrogating her about Schwegler’s death. It thus serves as a warning that Rommel is quite capable of harsh measures whenever he feels that they are necessary. Moreover, Lennig reminds us, “it prevents Rommel from appearing too likeable, a necessity for wartime propaganda.”32 Stroheim dominates the screen with his imposing presence in every sequence in which he appears. “Five Graves to Cairo is notable for its unsensationalized, nonstereotypical view of Rommel,” writes Kevin Lally; “the film treats him with deference, respecting him as a brilliant tactician and mighty opponent.”33

  Five Graves to Cairo was hailed as an ingeniously plotted melodrama with uniformly fine performances, a beautiful, dark gem among World War II films. The lion’s share of the praise, of course, went to Stroheim’s peerless portrayal of Rommel. In fact, the movie rejuvenated Stroheim’s acting career; he would repay Wilder by giving one of his last and best performances in Sunset Boulevard seven years later. Five Graves to Cairo still holds up as a top-notch espionage thriller with nary a sag. In Wilder’s estimate, it is one of the best pictures he directed.

  For his next film, Wilder chose to do a thriller, an adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity. Cinematographer John Seitz, film editor Doane Harrison, and composer Miklos Rozsa were committed to move on from Five Graves to Double Indemnity. Much to Wilder’s surprise, after collaborating with him on the screen treatment, Charles Brackett begged off, saying that a grim and gory crime novella like Double Indemnity was simply not his cup of tea. Since Wilder’s partnership with Brackett had often been described in the press as a marriage, Wilder accused Brackett of infidelity and went looking for another screenwriter to replace him on this project.

  4

  The Rise of Film Noir

  Double Indemnity

  During the war a new mood of cynicism, pessimism, and darkness had crept into the American cinema. Double Indemnity was the best written, the most characteristically film noir of the period. Double Indemnity was the first film which played film noir for what it essentially was: small-time, unredeemed, unheroic.

  —Paul Schrader, film historian

  In his book on film noir, William Hare repeats the story that one day Billy Wilder could not find his secretary. He was told by one of the women in the office that she was holed up in the ladies’ room, reading a novella titled Double Indemnity. After she emerged with the novelette “pressed against her bosom,” Wilder decided to read it himself.1 A nice anecdote, but apocryphal.

  Wilder maintained that Joseph Sistrom, the enterprising young executive who had suggested that Wilder turn the play Connie Goes Home into The Major and the Minor, “had read the [Cain] story and brought it to my attention.”2 Sistrom was a devotee of popular fiction and was familiar with the pulp fiction turned out by Cain and others. He had read Double Indemnity as it was serialized in Liberty magazine, in back issues from February 15 through April 4, 1936, which he had found in the story department’s archives. When Double Indemnity was published in book form in 1943, he suggested the property to Wilder.

  The story, a turgid tale of greed, lust, and betrayal, was right up Wilder’s street. After all, “the Berlin of the 1920s had taught Wilder to recognize decadence when he saw it,” as Richard Schickel writes in his monograph on this film.3 Double Indemnity portrayed a decadent, depraved world of violence and duplicity. Wilder would give us a foreigner’s vision of the underside of American life, as represented by the back streets of Los Angeles where the film is set. It is a drab world, devoid of beauty and decency.

  Wilder was aware from the get-go that Cain’s story would present him with censorship problems. The novella had already been considered and rejected by the major studios in 1935, shortly before it was serialized in Liberty magazine. This lurid tale describes how a villainess named Phyllis lures Walter, an insurance salesman, into a conspiracy to murder her husband for his insurance money—a conspiracy that becomes a recipe for their destruction. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had inquired of Joseph Breen whether Cain’s novelette was suitable for filming. Breen shot back a letter to MGM executive Louis B. Mayer, dated October 10, 1935, in which he asserted, “The story deals improperly with an illicit and adulterous sex relationship. The general low tone and sordid flavor of this story make it . . . thoroughly unacceptable for screen production,” according to the censorship code implemented by the industry in 1934.4 Moreover, Breen noted, the novella portrayed the actual planning and carrying out of a murder plot in minute detail, and “filmmakers were forbidden to depict details of a crime that might permit its imitation in real life.” Indeed, Breen considered the novella to be a “blueprint for murder,” which could show potential criminals how to kill for pro
fit.5 Breen’s letter scared off not only MGM but also every other studio in town from considering Double Indemnity as a viable film project.

  Cain remembered his agent’s showing him a copy of Breen’s report: “It started off, ‘UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES,’ and ended up, ‘NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM.’ My agent asked me if I wanted to hear what was in between, and I told him I could guess.” Eight years later, when Double Indemnity was published in book form, “my new agent, H. N. Swanson, sent it again to eight studios,” Cain recalled. Sistrom passed it on to Wilder, who snapped it up and immediately “took it home and read it.” Wilder arranged to buy the screen rights for a mere fifteen thousand dollars—there were no other bids.6

  On September 21, 1943, Paramount sent Breen a screen treatment of Double Indemnity, a detailed synopsis that Wilder had prepared in conjunction with Charles Brackett. The censor felt that the revised story line, which they had composed according to his specifications, had overcome in large measure his original concerns. Breen added that, after all, “adultery is no longer quite as objectionable” as it once was in motion pictures.7

  Sistrom agreed to produce Double Indemnity in Brackett’s stead, although the self-effacing young exec declined to accept a screen credit for doing so. He was listed officially as associate producer. But Wilder still needed someone to replace Brackett as his cowriter on the screenplay. Wilder had hoped to engage Cain himself to help him adapt his novella for film, but Cain was then under contract to Twentieth Century–Fox and could not accept a writing assignment at another studio. Sistrom suggested another eminent crime novelist, Raymond Chandler, to collaborate with Wilder on the screenplay. Wilder had read Chandler’s 1939 novel The Big Sleep and knew of his regular contributions to pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask, which specialized in crime stories. He was impressed with Chandler’s lively narrative style and pungent dialogue. Although Chandler had no previous experience in screenwriting, Wilder accepted Sistrom’s suggestion to engage Chandler, especially because Chandler “could put a nasty spin on dialogue.”8

  Chandler was interested in working with a writer-director who had already made an important wartime thriller, Five Graves to Cairo. His one hesitation was that he personally did not much care for Cain’s crime novels. In a letter to Blanche Knopf, the wife of his publisher, Alfred Knopf, on October 22, 1942, Chandler said of Cain, “Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is a faux naif, a Proust in overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk,” scrawling obscenities on a board fence when no one is looking. In short, Chandler disapproved of novelists like Cain “not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.”9 Withal, Chandler welcomed the opportunity to increase his income, since the sales of his short stories to pulp magazines proved woefully insufficient to pay his living expenses.

  Double Indemnity deals with the great American pastime of cheating an insurance company, and it does so with deadly seriousness. According to Wilder, Cain based his novella on the notorious Snyder-Gray case, which fascinated Wilder as well. John McCarty agrees that Cain’s novelette offers striking parallels to “the real-life murder case of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, who conspired to kill Snyder’s husband for $100,000 in insurance money” in Queens Village, New York, in 1927. “Unlike Cain’s fictional couple, however, Snyder and Gray were caught and sent to the electric chair.”10 Snyder achieved tabloid immortality when she became the first woman in New York to be executed. Moreover, a photojournalist smuggled a camera into the execution chamber at Sing Sing on January 12, 1928, and snapped a picture of Snyder just as the juice was turned on. The next day, the photograph appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News. Certainly the photo would have drawn Cain’s attention to the trial, if he had not been following it already.

  When Wilder scheduled a preliminary meeting with Chandler in his office on the fourth floor of the writers’ building at Paramount on May 12, 1943, he expected the author of hard-boiled detective fiction to be a burly, tough-looking type. Instead, Wilder recalled, he beheld a fifty-five-year-old gentleman wearing a frayed tweed jacket that made him look like a somewhat eccentric British schoolteacher. Chandler also had a sickly complexion, which to Wilder betokened that Chandler was “a man who has drowned himself in drink.”11

  It is true that Chandler had officially sworn off liquor by the time he went to work at Paramount, Al Clark comments, but the writer was a closet alcoholic who kept a pint bottle of bourbon stashed in his briefcase. Wilder was sure that Chandler would take a nip from the bottle whenever Wilder went to the restroom while they were working together. “Chandler responded all too easily to the climate of genial dipsomania” that prevailed among many of the writers, and he regularly drank with them at the end of the day at Lucy’s, a bistro frequented by Paramount employees.12 Wilder put up with Chandler’s drinking habits, he said later, because “he was one of the greatest creative minds I have ever worked with, though more trouble than any other writer I’ve ever worked with.”13

  At all events, during their first story conference, Chandler informed Wilder, “This is already Tuesday; I cannot promise you the script until next Monday.” Chandler was obviously laboring under the misconception that he was expected to write the screenplay on his own and in record time. Wilder responded that the studio was prepared to offer Chandler $750 a week for writing the script in collaboration with Wilder himself. To the mystery writer, accustomed to paltry payments from pulp publishers, this seemed a handsome sum. Still, Wilder warned Chandler, “You don’t know how scripts are written.”14 Wilder gave Chandler a copy of Cain’s novella, plus a copy of his own script for Hold Back the Dawn as a model screenplay, and told him to get to work.

  Not heeding Wilder’s warning, the neophyte screenwriter showed up at his next meeting with the director toting sixty-five pages of script, whereas Wilder had turned out three pages of the opening scene. For the most part, Schickel records, “Chandler had typed up Cain’s dialogue in the best imitation he could manage of screenplay form.” Wilder, with typical Wilder exaggeration, claimed Chandler had added camera directions like “the camera slips in through the keyhole and sniffs her undies.”15 Wilder took one look at Chandler’s batch of script pages, tossed them back at him, and barked, “This is crap, Mr. Chandler.” “You don’t know a damn thing about writing for the screen,” Wilder reiterated. “But I’ll teach you.”16

  Wilder went on to explain that Cain had written the novella in a hurried, slapdash fashion because he needed money, as Cain was the first to admit.17 As a result, the story’s narrative structure and character development needed shoring up. Wilder concluded by advising Chandler to forget about inserting camera directions into the script, since that was the director’s business. “Just let’s write characters and situations.”18 A morose, touchy man, Chandler preferred to work alone, so he resented the script conferences Wilder imposed on him, terming them “godawful jabber sessions.” Specifically, Chandler resented having to collaborate with this brash, opinionated filmmaker on a daily basis. He grew testier and more disagreeable as time went on.19

  Admittedly, Wilder was an excitable man who had his share of eccentricities, and they bothered Chandler. After all, Chandler had never before been forced to write in the same room with another person. Wilder paced back and forth while they discussed the screenplay, often brandishing a malacca cane, which he sometimes rudely waved in Chandler’s face as he emphasized a point. Chandler saw this as the height of incivility.

  Wilder had some grievances of his own. Chandler smoked a pipe from which emanated clouds of noxious smoke but insisted that the office windows remain tightly shut because he was convinced that the Los Angeles smog was hazardous to his health. One day, in exasperation, Wilder snapped, “Ray, would you raise the window just this once, for Chrissakes?”20

  Finally, one morning four weeks into coauthoring the script, Chandler, who was an inveterate collector of injustices, real or imagined, declined to report for work. Instead, he issued a written u
ltimatum to Wilder. It was a letter of complaint, the director recalled, in which Chandler maintained that he was fed up with Wilder’s rudeness. The letter insisted that Wilder “is at no time to swish under Mr. Chandler’s nose or to point in his direction the thin, leather-handled Malacca cane which Mr. Wilder is in the habit of waving around while they work. Mr. Wilder is not to give Mr. Chandler orders of an arbitrary nature, such as ‘Ray, will you open that window?’ ”21

  Sistrom acted as mediator; he contacted Chandler, who told him succinctly, “I don’t want to work with that son-of-a-bitch any more.”22 Nevertheless, Sistrom coaxed him into reporting for work the following morning. Wilder and Chandler made a truce, although Wilder reminded him, “For God’s sake, Ray, we don’t have court manners around here.” But he apologized just the same, simply because he still admired Chandler’s writing ability and very much wanted him to continue collaborating on the script. For a tyro screenwriter to exact an apology from an influential film director was deemed something of an achievement at the writers’ table in the Paramount commissary. The rancor that characterized Wilder and Chandler’s relationship, however, did not interfere with their collaboration on the script.

  The completed script is dated September 25, 1943; filming began the following week. Chandler was kept on salary throughout the shooting period to help Wilder revise any scene that needed work. In all, Chandler was on salary for six months, from May through November 1943, netting him eighteen thousand dollars—more money than he had made in a long time.

  During the shooting period, Chandler agreed to do a silent cameo for the film. Sixteen minutes into the film, Walter Neff leaves the office of Barton Keyes and passes a lone figure sitting in the corridor, reading a magazine and facing the camera. Neff does not notice him, but he notices Neff: Raymond Chandler looks up from his magazine and gazes at Neff for a moment, and then returns to his reading.