Double Indemnity
1944
****½
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber
An insurance salesman with a gunshot wound recounts how he helped an alluring married woman to carry out the perfect murder to claim her husband’s life insurance. Billy Wilder's seminal and highly infuential film noir has all the key elements of the genre: a gullible hero, a femme fatale, betrayal, suspicion, sexual tension, and murder. Wilder and Raymond Chandler scripted from James M. Cain's 1943 novel; no wonder the dialogue sizzles.
