Double indemnity

Billy Wilder
Writers:James M. Cain (novel)Billy Wilder (screenplay) ...
Release Date:6 September 1944 (USA)
Genre:Crime Film-Noir Thriller
Tagline:It's Love And Murder At First Sight !

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/plotsummary

Double Indemnity (1944) is an Academy Award nominated film noir starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. The movie was directed by Billy Wilder and adapted by Wilder and Raymond Chandler from the novella of the same title by James M. Cain that first appeared in 1935 as an abridged 8-part serial in Liberty Magazine.
The story was based on a 1927 crime perpetrated by a married Queens woman and her lover. Ruth (Brown) Snyder persuaded her boyfriend, Judd Gray, to kill her husband Albert after having her spouse take out a big insurance policy—with a double-indemnity clause. The murderers were quickly identified and arrested.

The opening scene starts with a speeding car, jumping the lights in an American city. Its nightime, which is typical of Film Noir. The setting is deliberately dark, and lit by only streetlights, showing that it is not filmed in a studio but on location. A man, Neff, gets out of his car with a mysterious enigma, with his coat over his shoulders, showing that it could be filmed near winter time. The low-key lighting literally keeps us in the dark. There is also dialogue in the opening scenes hinting at key information, given to the audience by the lift operator who reveals the mans name, Neff, that he is working late - something unusual is going on and that he works in the insurance business.

The lift operator is internally put into the film to reveal this information to the audience so they wonder why he is in the office working late.