Double Indemnity (1944)

In 1938, insurance salesman Walter Neff returns to his office in downtown Los Angeles with a gunshot wound on his shoulder. He records a confession on a dictaphone for his friend and colleague, claims adjuster Barton Keyes. A flashback ensues. Neff meets the alluring Phyllis Dietrichson during a house call to remind her husband to renew his automobile insurance policy. They flirt, until Phyllis asks about buying an accident insurance policy for her husband – without his knowledge. Neff deduces Phyllis is contemplating murder, and wants no part of it. Eventually though, she seduces him, and he tricks her husband into signing what he thinks is a renewal. The policy has a double indemnity clause that pays double for an accidental death.

Later, Phyllis drives her husband to the train station to attend his college reunion. Neff hides in the back seat, kills him and boards the train posing as Mr. Dietrichson. After the train gets underway, he goes to the outdoor platform at the back, ostensibly to smoke. He jumps off at a prearranged spot to meet Phyllis and drag Dietrichson’s body onto the tracks. Mr. Norton, the company’s president, believes the death was suicide, but Keyes dismisses this theory. Soon, however, he begins to have doubts about the claim’s legitimacy. Keyes tells Neff his theory while Phyllis hides behind the door: that she and an accomplice murdered Dietrichson for the insurance money. But he has no proof.