Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity is a 1944 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay from James M. Cain's novel of the same name, which ran as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine in 1936. The film stars an insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who plots with a woman, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), to kill her husband in order to claim a life insurance payment, arousing the suspicion of claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). The title refers to a "double indemnity" clause which doubles life insurance payouts when death occurs in a statistically rare manner. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Widely regarded as a classic, Double Indemnity is often cited as having set the standard for film noir and as one of the greatest films of all time. In 1992, the U.S. Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".