75th Anniversary

Nominated for seven Oscars®, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress, this is the epitome of hardboiled film noir, as jaded insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and bored housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) team up to murder her husband and collect on the policy. They fool ace insurance inspector Edward G. Robinson, but getting away with murder turns out to be a full-time job. L.A.'s car-centric sprawl isolates the couple and provides cover for their scheming - from its empty streets and offices to mundane markets, garages and commuter train stations. Billy Wilder and detective fiction maestro Raymond Chandler penned the screenplay, adapting the novel of another hardboiled great, James M. Cain. DIR/SCR Billy Wilder; SCR Raymond Chandler, from the novel by James M. Cain; PROD Joseph Sistrom. U.S., 1944, b&w, 107 min. NOT RATED