Directed by Billy Wilder • 1944 • United States
Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson
Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously wicked as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter Raymond Chandler, director Billy Wilder launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this epitome of film-noir fatalism from James M. Cain’s pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from Edward G. Robinson and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer John F. Seitz, DOUBLE INDEMNITY is one of the most entertainingly perverse stories ever told and the standard by which all noir must be measured.
Up Next in Queersighted: Queer Noir
-
Gilda
Directed by Charles Vidor • 1946 • United States
Starring Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready“Gilda, are you decent?” Rita Hayworth tosses her hair back and slyly responds, “Me?” in one of the great star entrances in movie history. GILDA, directed by Charles Vidor, features a sultry Hayw...
-
The Big Clock
Directed by John Farrow • 1948 • United States
Starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’SullivanOne of the finest suspense thrillers of the 1940s, THE BIG CLOCK stars Ray Milland as a hapless crime-magazine editor plunged into a web of danger when he begins being systematically framed ...
-
Cry of the Hunted
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis • 1953 • United States
Starring Vittorio Gassman, Barry Sullivan, Polly BergenDirected in typically dynamic, imaginative style by B-noir maestro Joseph H. Lewis (GUN CRAZY, THE BIG COMBO) this atmospheric, Louisiana-set cat-and-mouse thriller follows an obsessive lie...
