Billy Wilder's regular collaborator, the upper-class New Englander Charles Brackett, considered James M Cain's novella too sordid a project. So they briefly split up and Wilder engaged novelist Raymond Chandler, who'd never worked in the movies, to co-write the script. The result was a hard-boiled thriller that helped define the meaning of film noir, bringing together a weak, brash insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) and a bitchy Los Angeles housewife (Barbara Stanwyck) to plot the murder of her heavily insured husband, then play a cat-and-mouse game with an ace claims investigator (Edward G Robinson).
Greatly improving on Cain's novel, the film approaches perfection with its crackling dialogue, total absence of sentimentality, and depiction of Los Angeles as a new kind of anonymous, amoral, amorphous city. Working together brilliantly, Robinson, MacMurray and Stanwyck have never been better, and there is a special bonus in the recently identified appearance of Raymond Chandler in the background, quite early on, as MacMurray walks through the insurance company's office. This welcome Blu-ray disc is accompanied by a 36-page booklet, a documentary feature, and the 1945 radio version starring Stanwyck and MacMurray.
