Double Indemnity

[jazzbo]

AS I will be spending 3 plus weeks in the land of the Septics, I am leaving this extended dialog delivered by Edward G. Robinson (KEYES) in the Billy Wilder-directed movie Double Indemnity. BTW there is no spoiler here -- the entire movie is flashback. The whole movie screenplay can be read at

http://www.weeklyscript(dot)com/Double%20Indemnity.txt

KEYES

Nice going, Mr. Norton. You sure

carried that ball.

Norton pours himself a glass of water and stands holding it.

KEYES

Only you fumbled on the goal line.

Then you heaved an illegal forward

pass and got thrown for a forty-yard

loss. Now you can't pick yourself up

because you haven't got a leg to

stand on.

NORTON (the Insurance Company Chairman)

I haven't eh? Let her claim. Let her

sue. We can prove it was suicide.

Keyes stands up.

KEYES

Can we? Mr. Norton, the first thing

that hit me was that suicide angle.

Only I dropped it in the wastepaper

basket just three seconds later. You

ought to take a look at the statistics

on suicide sometime. You might learn

a little something about the insurance

business.

NORTON

I was raised in the insurance

business, Mr. Keyes.

KEYES

Yeah. In the front office. Come on,

you never read an actuarial table in

your life. I've got ten volumes on

suicide alone. Suicide by race, by

color, by occupation, by sex, by

seasons of the year, by time of day.

Suicide, how committed: by poisons,

by fire-arms, by drowning, by leaps.

Suicide by poison, subdivided by

types of poison, such as corrosive,

irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic,

alkaloid, protein, and so forth.

Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps

from high places, under wheels of

trains, under wheels of trucks, under

the feet of horses, from steamboats.

But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on

record there's not one single case

of suicide by leap from the rear end

of a moving train. And do you know

how fast that train was going at the

point where the body was found?

Fifteen miles an hour. Now how could

anybody jump off a slow moving train

like that with any kind of expectation

that he would kill himself? No soap,

Mr. Norton. We're sunk, and we're

going to pay through the nose, and

you know it. May I have this?

Keyes' throat is dry after the long speech. He grabs the

glass of water out of Norton's hand and drains it in one big

gulp.

Norton is watching him almost stupefied. Neff stands with

the shadow of a smile on his face. Keyes puts the glass down

noisily on Norton's desk.

-- Neff is the real killer but you in the audience are well aware of that.