An insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) gets more than he bargained for after falling for a housewife (Barbara Stanwyck) in Billy Wilder’s 1944 thriller.

Double Indemnity is vintage noir, all shadowy cinematography and shadier morality. Co-written by Raymond Chandler, the rapid-fire dialogue is loaded with sexual tension and the promise of violence. It is more straightforward than The Big Sleep and wastes no time in cutting to the troubled couple and their double trouble. One moment the leads are trading insurance-based innuendo (“You’re not fully covered…”), the next they are plotting her husband’s murder.

The setup would seem overly pulpy were it not set in the world of insurance, usually comic shorthand for boring (see His Girl Friday). But these are the most passionate insurance people in history, essentially acting as detectives in solving a supposedly near-perfect crime. In reality the plan is laden with loopholes, not least when the murderess is spotted trying on a black veil to check out how she would look in mourning. But watching the feckless felons come apart at the seams is part of the fun, and their arrogance all but ensures a pessimistic payoff.

MacMurray is perfectly cocky as the morally broke policy broker who gets played like an insurance fiddle. He tells the story in flashback to his boss, a cigar-chomping claims investigator charmingly played by Edward G. Robinson. And Stanwyck shines as the smokey femme fatale, whose initially disarming demeanour makes her all the more dangerous.

It all adds up to one of the harder-boiled flicks in the genre, a widely celebrated crime classic that fully deserves its many claims to fame.