If you haven't purchased the new, two-disc Universal DVD of Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity," I hope you will do so soon, or ask someone on your Christmas gift exchange list to get it for you. The restoration is excellent--you can see the dust motes floating in Barbara Stanwyck's cigar-choked living room--and worlds better than the bare-bones DVD release of several years ago. A Turner Classic Movies documentary on Disc One tells how Wilder rose to the challenge of developing James M. Cain's salacious story for the screen, over the strenuous opposition of the Hays Office and the terror of any actors he approached that playing the poisonous Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson would ruin their careers. In any case, Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson ended up giving Wilder three of the greatest performances ever recorded on film. (The Academy nominated Stanwyck for Best Actress, but denied her the Oscar, which was stupid; it completely passed over MacMurray and Robinson, which was idiotic.) The most hilarious part of the documentary details the abject mutual loathing that existed between Wilder and co-scenarist Raymond Chandler; though they could only bear to spend a few minutes at a time in each other's presence, Wilder and Chandler ended up creating some of the most sparkling dialogue in the history of the cinema, such as the famous exchange between Stanwyck and MacMurray:
"There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff--forty-five miles an hour."
"How fast was I going, Officer?"
"I'd say around ninety."
"Suppose you climb down from your motorcycle and give me a ticket?'
"Suppose I let you off with a warning?"
"Suppose it doesn't take?"
"Suppose I rap you over the knuckles?"
"Suppose I burst out crying and lay my head on your shoulder?"
"Suppose you try laying it on my husband's shoulder?"
To watch "Double Indemnity" is to receive a short lesson in the best of film directing, acting and writing. But as if to drive the point home, Universal and TCM generously include a second disc containing a superb lesson of how NOT to make a movie: the 1973 TV remake of "Double Indemnity," written by Steven Bochco and starring Richard Crenna, Semantha Eggar and Lee J. Cobb. After it first aired, the documentary tells us, Wilder and Stanwyck spent hours on the phone together talking about how horrible it was; after seeing it yourself, you will understand why. To see the remake is to understand Oscar Wilde's remark that if you see a beautiful tulip with four petals, it's all right to grow a tulip with five petals, but not one with three. Wherever Bochco changes the Wilder-Chandler original, he diminishes it; fortunately, he had learned a great deal more about screenwriting by the time "Hill Street Blues" premiered. Crenna and Eggar sleepwalk through the MacMurray and Stanwyck roles, while the formerly reputable Lee J. Cobb brings to mind some famous names--Armour, Plumrose, Smithfield, Hormel...In any case, the 1973 "Double Indemnity" is an instructive hoot to watch--ONCE. The 1944 original is a film to watch over and over and over.