Double Indemnity (1944 Billy Wilder)

Written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler from the novel by James M. Cain, plot is perhaps best summarised by its own quotation: " I killed him for money - and a woman - and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman. Pretty, isn't it?"

Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson.

Film was nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. Also for best Actress, Music, Cinematography* and Sound. Legendary cameraman John Seitz**, who started in silents on Rex Ingram films, shot some of the best Sturges and early Wilders (all his films for the latter were Oscar nominated). This is one of Miklós Rózsa's finest scores and he too worked again with Wilder, perhaps trumping all earlier work with his Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in 1970.

The dialogue is absolutely crackling, e.g. the "There's a speed limit in this state" exchange.
"You're not smarter, just a little taller."
"The time for thinking had run out."
And the memorably eerie line: "I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man."

All three leads are particularly credible in their respective roles.

Fred MacMurray admiring Barbara Stanwyck's ... ankle bracelet.

* The fact that this film lost to Laura, which was only partially shot by the credited camerman Joseph Lashelle, is rather unfair (in fact Lucien Ballard had completed 75% of it before he and Rouben Mamoulian were removed, see Leonard Maltin 'The Art of the Cinematographer' 1978 ed. p. 110).

** John SEITZ (from 1916).
Notable credits:

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (21)
Prisoner of Zenda (22)
The Divine Lady (29)(nom)
Another Thin Man (39)
Sullivan's Travels (41)
Five Graves to Cairo (43)(nom)
Miracle of Morgan's Creek (44)
Double Indemnity
Hail the Conquoring Hero (44)
Lost Weekend (45)(nom)
Sunset Boulevard (50)(nom)
When Worlds Collide (co-ph)(52)(nom)
Rogue Cop (54)(nom)

Miklós Rózsa (born Budapest)
Met Korda in London, 1935.

Knight Without Armour (37)
Thief of Bagdad (40)(nom)
Lydia (41)(nom)
Sundown (41)(nom)
Jungle Book (42) (nom)
The Woman of the Town (43)(nom)
Double Indemnity (nom)
Blood on the Sun (45)
The Song to Remember (45) (nom)
Lost Weekend (45) (nom)
Spellbound (45) (won)
The Killers (46) (nom)
Brute Force (47)
A Double Life (47) (won)
Criss Cross (49)
Asphalt Jungle (50)
Quo Vadis (51) (nom)
Ivanhoe (52) (nom)
Julius Caesar (53) (nom)
Ben Hur (59) (won)
El Cid (61) (nom)
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (70)
Fedora (78)