In Double Indemnity (1944), Barbara Stanwyck played Phyllis Dietrichson, a housewife who persuades insurance salesman Walter Neff to help her murder her husband. Directed by Billy Wilder, the film is a defining work of film noir, told in flashback as Neff confesses his crime.
Phyllis, with her blonde wig and ankle bracelet, became the archetype of the femme fatale, but Stanwyck played her as more than a symbol. She is cool, calculating and utterly self-possessed, and her scenes with Fred MacMurray’s Neff crackle with a dangerous, controlled tension.
Double Indemnity earned Stanwyck an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and it remains one of the most studied and admired films of the 1940s. Phyllis Dietrichson is, for many viewers, Stanwyck’s greatest role.