Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, adapted from James M. Cain's novella, in which an insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray conspires with a client's wife, played by Barbara Stanwyck, to murder her husband and collect on a fraudulent accident policy. Narrated in flashback by the doomed salesman as a confession into a dictaphone, the film established narrative and visual conventions, including its fatalistic voiceover and high-contrast lighting, that became defining features of the genre it helped found. Double Indemnity is widely regarded as one of the founding and most influential films of American film noir.