The Guilty (Den skyldige) (2018)

January 21, 2018 (Sundance Film Festival), June 14, 2018 (Denmark), release dates

Directed by Gustav Möller

Screenplay by Gustav Möller, Emil Nygaard Albertsen

Music by Carl Coleman, Caspar Hesselager

Edited by Cala Luff

Cinematography by Jasper J. Spanning

Jakob Cedergran as Asger Holm

Jessica Dinnage as Iben Østergård (voice)

Omar Shargawi as Rashid (voice)

Johan Olsen as Michael Berg (voice)

Katinka Evers-Jahnsen as Mathilde Østergård (voice)

Jacob Lohmann as Bo (voice)

Simon Bennebjerg as Nikolaj Jensen (voice)

Laura Bro as Tanja Brix (voice)

Morten Thumbo as Torben

Distributed by Nordisk Film Distribution, Magnolia Pictures (United States)

Produced by Nordisk Film Spring, New Danish Screen

First is a black screen and silence, and then a list of only the production companies in the opening credits. When the film returns to the black screen, the only sound is a phone ringing, and it rings long enough to make viewers start wondering. The film then cuts abruptly to Asger Holm, who is supposed to be answering one of the phones in an emergency services department in Denmark, and he does pick up eventually. Almost the entire film takes place in real time, over the course of one evening, in the two rooms of the emergency services department call center. The actor playing Asger Holm, Jakob Cedergran, carries the entire film, which consists only of Asger Holm’s phone conversations with people who are desperately seeking help and the few conversations that he has with his coworkers. Viewers learn everything about Asger and about the other characters through Asger’s conversations.

The description so far of The Guilty may not sound like it has much of a plot, but the film draws viewers in steadily and surely. Although his supervisor warns him against it, Asger becomes emotionally involved with one particular caller: Iben Østergård. And that’s when viewers become involved, too; I certainly did. Iben calls emergency services from a van already on the road because she has been taken against her will by her ex-husband, Michael Berg. She is sobbing and talking nonsense, nonsense, that is, until Asger realizes that she is pretending to talk to one of her children so that her husband won’t cut her off.

(This blog post about The Guilty contains some spoilers.)

Once Asger starts breaking the rules, he cannot stop. Viewers learn that this is a habit of his, that it has become a liability. Asger calls Iben Østergård’s home and talks to Iben’s daughter Mathilde. He is already emotionally involved in this case because of his conversation with Iben, but his conversation with Mathilde hits him even harder. Mathilde describes the scene when her father Michael showed up at the house and dragged her mother out by the hair. She is home alone now with her baby brother Oliver, and she desperately wants to see her mother again. Asger makes promises to Mathilde that he knows he almost certainly cannot keep: that nothing will happen to her mother and that she will see her mother again. Asger continues to violate department policy when he gets Michael’s phone number from Mathilde and then calls Michael directly.

Through his conversations with callers seeking help, we learn that Asger is due in court the next day, that he has been assigned to desk duty in the emergency services department until his court case is resolved, that he’s been seeing a department-appointed psychiatrist, that is wife Patricia has moved out. Clearly Asger is a troubled man, but he is still a forceful personality: Callers listen to his advice; his partner Rashid wants him back as his partner and working on the streets again.

Just like all the other characters in the film, we know Asger’s partner Rashid only through his phone conversations with Asger, but we learn a lot about him, too. He is loyal to the extreme. He talks about lying to help Asger and that he is worried about keeping his story straight when he appears in court the next day as a witness in Asger’s hearing. He breaks the law when Asger tells him to enter Michael Berg’s residence to find clues about Michael’s intentions and his plans for his ex-wife:

• Asger: “Rashid?”

• Rashid: “I’m at 12 Strandlodsvej. A brown house. It looks like nobody is home. The lights are out. There’s no car.”

• Asger: “Break in.”

• Rashid: “What?”

• Asger: “Just do as I say.”

• Rashid: “At least tell me why I’m here.”

• Asger: “I will when you’re out of the car. [the sound of a vehicle door opening and closing] Are you listening?”

• Rashid: “Yeah.”

• Asger: “The man who lives there killed his son. Then he kidnapped his ex. They’re heading north. We need his destination.”

• Rashid: “Did emergency services assign you this?”

• Asger “No, I assigned it to myself.”

• Rashid: “Of course you did.”

Rashid knows that following Asger’s instructions could lead to more trouble for both of them, but he enters Michael Berg’s home anyway.

Asger continues to break the rules when he calls Michael Berg and tries to confront him over the phone. By this point in the film, he knows that Michael is a convicted felon. Over the course of the evening, Asger also learns more and more about Iben’s and Michael’s situation. It takes an emotional toll on everyone involved, and the following conversation illustrates in particular Michael’s frustration, despair, and desperation so well:

• Asger: “Where’s Iben?”

• Michael: “I don’t know. I think she hit me.”

• Asger: “I’ll send the police. Do you need an ambulance?”

• Michael: “No police.”

• Asger: “I have to.”

• Michael: “I haven’t f--king done anything!”

• Asger: “I know. I know. Why didn’t you tell me? You should have called the police and let us take care of Iben.”

• Michael: “So you could help her or what?”

• Asger: “Yes. That’s our job.”

• Michael: [laughs] “Nobody is of any help. I tried. Doctors, lawyers, the municipality. None of them will help.”

• Asger: “I’m trying to help.”

• Michael: “F--k you! F--k all of you! . . . [starts crying]

This conversation is especially hard on Asger because he knows that some of the evening’s events are the result of his assumptions and his own words, his own advice, to desperate callers needing the help of the emergency services department.

When Asger begins to realize how his actions and his lies have affected others, the director and the cinematographer, Gustav Möller and Jasper J. Spanning, respectively, use lighting to portray the changes in his mood and demeanor. The red light of the phone indicator light bathes Asger in a garish red glow as he sits and contemplates the consequences, some of them horrific, of his actions.

The Guilty could be a low-budget film noir from the 1940s. It has the single setting: two rooms of phone banks in the emergency services department in Denmark. The other major characters do not appear on-screen (no wardrobe costs!). And the lead, Asger Holm, is a rogue cop who is willing to break the rules. The title, The Guilty, is a perfect—and ambiguous—choice because it could apply, in varying degrees, to several characters, but most specifically to Asger Holm and to one of his callers. I don’t want to say which one because this film has some twists and turns that took me completely by surprise, and I don’t want to ruin the experience for newcomers to the film.

The Guilty is about making assumptions, but it is also about the courage needed to face the truth and about the compassion needed to process the consequences of one’s actions and move forward. Jakob Cedergran reveals his character’s development entirely through his conversations and through facial expressions. It’s a wonderful performance about a man under a lot of pressure, some of it self-imposed.

I read online that Hollywood plans a remake of The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhaal in the starring role. I like Jake Gyllenhaal as an actor, but I don’t have much hope that a remake can exceed or even match the power of the original. I plan to see it if it is ever released, however; maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Double Indemnity (1944): Film Noir after Seventy-Five Years

September 6, 1944, release date

Directed by Billy Wilder

Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler

Based on the novel Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

Music by Miklós Rószsa

Edited by Doane Harrison

Cinematography by John Seitz

Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff

Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson

Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes

Porter Hall as Mr. Jackson

Jean Heather as Lola Dietrichson

Tom Powers as Mr. Dietrichson

Byron Barr as Nino Zachetti

Richard Gaines as Edward S. Norton, Jr.

Fortunio Bonanova as Sam Garlopis

John Philliber as Joe Peters

Raymond Chandler as man reading a magazine (cameo)

Bess Flowers as Norton’s secretary

Betty Farrington as Nettie, the Dietrichson’s maid

Teala Loring as Pacific All-Risk Insurance telephone operator

Sam McDaniel as Charlie, the garage attendant

Distributed by Paramount Pictures

Produced by Paramount Pictures

Billy Wilder directed many great films, some of which happen to be my personal favorites: Sunset Boulevard (1950), starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden; Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis; The Apartment (1960), starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. I have seen these films numerous times, but I hadn’t seen Double Indemnity for the first time, from beginning to end, until earlier this year.

My sister couldn’t believe that I call myself a fan of noir and I hadn’t seen the film for so long. I find it a little hard to believe myself. I often like to say that I prefer the book to the film and that I want to read the book before I see the film version. But I had read James M. Cain’s book, and I still balked at seeing the film for the longest time. And now that I have seen Double Indemnity, I see that it deserves all the praise that is directed its way. But I must confess that I struggled with writing this blog post.

It has to do with the actor playing the male lead: Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff. MacMurray is wonderfully slimy as Jeff D. Sheldrake, C. C. Baxter’s (Jack Lemmon’s) boss who offers career advancement in The Apartment only if Baxter allows his apartment to be used as a love nest for company executives. But I just cannot see MacMurray as a romantic lead or as an homme fatale. Did his starring role in the television series My Three Sons (1960–1972) ruin him as a man capable of dangerous passion? It may be part of the reason, but I am not entirely convinced. I have seen MacMurray in Borderline, a film noir in which he is paired with Claire Trevor, and I think he succeeds as a romantic lead in that film. I suspect, however, that some of the credit may be attributed to Trevor because she is fantastic in everything in which she appears. And MacMurray’s part in Borderline didn’t require lust and a lack of ethics.

(This blog post about Double Indemnity, both the novel and the film, contains spoilers.)

James M. Cain’s novel Double Indemnity, the story that is the basis for the film, is hard to beat for its noir characteristics, specifically its lack of redemption for all its characters. (Click here for my blog post about James M. Cain’s novel.) If I had to choose between the novel and the film (if I were stranded on a deserted ship and forced to lighten my load to avoid sinking!), I would have to pick the novel. It is pessimistic, it is bleak, it is thoroughly noir.

The ending is but one example of why I like the book more: Barton Keyes arranges an escape to Mexico via ship for Walter Huff (Walter Neff’s name in the novel), but instead Huff finds himself on board a ship that is also carrying Phyllis Nirdlinger (Phyllis Dietrichson’s name in the novel). Keyes had arranged both Phyllis’s and Walter’s ship passages; he wants to get rid of them rather than sully the name of the insurance company, his employer, by prosecuting a crime, murder, committed by one of its employees, namely, Huff. The ending isn’t stated explicitly, but Huff seems resigned to following Nirdlinger overboard into shark-infested waters because neither one of them have any other options other than the death penalty. And death by shark would be decidedly quicker than navigating the legal system.

Billy Wilder made some changes to the story in the novel because the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays code, that prevailed in the film industry at the time wouldn’t allow the subject of suicide and other topics deemed sensitive by the censors to be portrayed on-screen. (Click here for a discussion of the production code in relation to four of Wilder’s films, including Double Indemnity, at the blog site Dial M for Movies.) In the film, Barton Keyes does catch up with Walter Neff and learns that he is responsible for the murders of both Phyllis and her husband, but he is deeply disappointed because he considers Walter a friend and is rather fond of him. Keyes’s interest in Neff struck me as paternal; he takes an interest in his career path, for example, when he suggests that Neff become a claims adjustor and join his department.

In his commentary on the DVD, film historian Richard Schickel maintains that the most important relationship in the film is not the one between Phyllis and Walter but the one between Walter and Barton Keyes. Lem Dobbs states the same in the commentary he almost shares with Nick Redman (I say “almost” because Dobbs does almost all the talking), although Dobbs feels that the relationship between the two is based on an equal footing and not a father-son dynamic. But these observations just emphasize how hard it is for me to see Fred MacMurray as a man capable of passion. His portrayal of Walter Neff just doesn’t make me believe there is any lustful passion involved. Walter Neff wants the money; he wants to prove that he can beat the insurance industry at its own game. But I’m not sure he wants Phyllis Dietrichson quite as much.

Double Indemnity has earned high praise from many, and my copy of the film on DVD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment comes with not one but two audio commentaries: one by Richard Schickel and one by film historians Lem Dobbs and Nick Redman. The seventy-fifth anniversary of the film’s release has received plenty of attention. Click here for an example from National Public Radio (NPR).

Many film noir scholars consider Double Indemnity to be the first true film noir, the first in a genre that was yet to be named when the film was released in 1944, seventy-five years ago. Film noir is a category that is very difficult to define, however, and people define it in different ways. Even trying to define a film noir period is difficult to do. Click here for a different opinion published by The Guardian: “After The Maltese Falcon: How Film Noir Took Flight.”

There is no doubt, however, that Double Indemnity stands up to scrutiny after seventy-five years (eighty-three years for the novel). Even after several decades, the stories in both the print and film versions are absorbing, and I think it’s because they focus on the relationships among the characters. With the novel, readers can imagine the setting anyway they want to; with the film, the out-of-date styles for just about everything—from clothes to cars, even to office furniture—are clear and obvious. Yet the story still commands attention. In his audio commentary, Richard Schickel maintains that the changes to the novel for the screenplay owe their cohesion and success mostly to Billy Wilder, that he was the one who kept the focus on the characters and especially on the relationship between Walter Neff and Barton Keyes. I have to agree, and Schickel’s points are probably some of many reasons why Double Indemnity still appeals to so many fans after seventy-five years.

This blog post about Double Indemnity is my entry for the Classic Movie Blog Association’s 2019 Fall Blogathon: The Anniversary Blogathon. It’s a celebration of ten years of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Click here for the complete list of blogathon participants and links to their entries.