Where was Double Indemnity (1944) filmed?

Filming

Filming ran from September 27 to November 24, 1943. John F. Seitz was the premier director of photography at Paramount, having worked since the silent era. Seitz was nominated for an Academy Award for Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo (1943). The director praised Seitz's willingness to experiment. They gave the film a look reminiscent of German expressionist cinema, with dramatic deployment of light and shadows. Wilder recalled, "Sometimes the rushes were so dark that you couldn't see anything. He went to the limits of what could be done." Bright Southern California exteriors contrasted with gloomy interiors to suggest what lurked beneath the facade. The effect was heightened by dirtying up the set with overturned ashtrays and blowing aluminum particles into the air to simulate dust.

Seitz used "Venetian blind" lighting to simulate prison bars trapping the characters. Barbara Stanwyck reflected that "the way those sets were lit, the house, Walter's apartment, those dark shadows, those slices of harsh light at strange angles – all that helped my performance. The way Billy staged it and John Seitz lit it, it was all one sensational mood."

For Neff's office at Pacific All Risk, Wilder and set designer Hal Pereira copied the Paramount headquarters in New York City as an inside joke at the studio's expense.

Stanwyck wears a blonde wig "to complement her anklet...and to make her look as sleazy as possible." Paramount production head Buddy DeSylva did not approve of the wig, remarking that "We hired Barbara Stanwyck, and here we get George Washington." In response, Wilder insisted that the wig was "meant to show that she's a phony character and that all of her emotions are fraudulent". A week into filming, Wilder came to consider the wig a mistake, but too much of the film had been shot to remove it; he later referred to the use of the wig as the biggest mistake of his career.

Edith Head designed Barbara Stanwyck's costumes. Her designs focus on bias-cut gowns, blouses with wide sleeves, and the waistline. Shoulder pads were the style of the 1940s, but they also accentuated the femme fatale's power. In Stanwyck's death scene, her wig and white jumpsuit contrast with Neff's dark suit, creating a chiaroscuro effect.

When Phyllis and Walter dump the corpse on the tracks, they were supposed to get in their car and drive away. The crew shot the scene as written. As Wilder left the exterior location, however, his car would not start. He ordered the crew back and reshot the scene with Phyllis struggling to start her car. Wilder insisted MacMurray turn the ignition so slowly that the actor protested.

Wilder managed to bring the whole production in under budget at $927,262 despite $370,000 in salaries for just four people: $100,000 each for MacMurray, Stanwyck, and Robinson; $44,000 for Wilder's writing plus $26,000 for his directing. Wilder considered Double Indemnity his best film because it had so few scripting and shooting errors. He marked Cain's praise for Double Indemnity and Agatha Christie's praise for his adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution as two high points in his career.