A 1944 American film noir about an insurance salesman seduced into murdering a client's husband to collect on a policy he writes for him.
Production
Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote with Raymond Chandler, adapting James M. Cain’s 1943 novella. Fred MacMurray, cast against type, played the salesman; Barbara Stanwyck played the wife; Edward G. Robinson played his suspicious supervisor.
Reception
The film opened in April 1944 and earned strong reviews and seven Oscar nominations, though no wins. Its commercial performance helped Paramount confirm appetite for darker postwar material.
Legacy
The film is widely regarded as the prototypical American film noir, introducing the femme fatale and the doomed first-person narration that became genre conventions. Wilder considered it one of the cleanest narrative constructions of his career.
Find more movies by letter
Double Indemnity starts with D and ends with Y. Browse other movies along the same letter.
Movies that contain a letter from "Double Indemnity":