James M Cain's 1936 novella was considered unfilmable until Paramount chose it for Billy Wilder to direct as his third Hollywood film.
With Cain unavailable to co-write the script, Wilder chose Raymond Chandler whose hard-boiled dialogue worked wonders.
Insurance salesman Walter Neff meets Phyllis Dietrichson when he visits her house wanting her husband to renew his car insurance. Instantly attracted to each other, Phyllis soon asks if Walter could arrange life insurance for her husband without him knowing.
Walter gets Dietrichson to unknowingly sign the policy and soon the lovers plan the perfect murder to get the money...
But when Neff's friend, claims investigator Barton Keyes, suspects foul play and gets closer to the truth, Walter realizes he was a pawn in Phyllis' murderous game all along...
Shelf or charity shop? DOUBLE INDEMNITY lives in my DVD storage box but is definitely a keeper. With it's shadowy photography and ominous score DOUBLE INDEMNITY is definitive Film Noir; Wilder and Chandler's crunchy dialogue crackles onscreen while Wilder's direction keeps the motor racing to the end. Fred MacMurray, playing against type, is the perfect Noir anti-hero, the man who thinks he is running the game until he realises he's the one being played and he is ably partnered with Edward G Robinson as the fatherly Keyes. As the deceiving Phyllis, Barbara Stanwyck gave the cinema one of it's great femme fatales.
