Narrative, October 1st, 2005
The original conclusion to Billy Wilder's Academy-Award nominated film noir Double Indemnity (1944) depicted its protagonist entering the gas chamber for execution. Walter Neff, having helped his lover Phyllis Dietrichson kill her husband for insurance money, has come to the end of the line to meet his own late in a tog of cyanide fumes. According to the shooting script, the film's last scenes followed the facial expressions of Neff's friend and former boss, Keyes, who registered horror at the state-sanctioned death.
Unfortunately, although Wilder claimed that this ending was one of the two...
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