This still photo from the film noir classic Double Indemnity (Ger. Frau ohne Gewissen, 1944) by Billy Wilder contains a logical error that the director had to accept due to the camera position: Barbara Stanwyck is hiding in the hallway behind the apartment door of Fred MacMurray to avoid encountering Edward G. Robinson, who also wishes to visit his friend and colleague. To get the three actors into the same shot, the door had to open outwards.

But the minor inaccuracy had no adverse impact on the dark crime film. Today it is regarded as a classic of the film noir genre, which was largely shaped by European directors. Double Indemnity was created in the same years as Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady and Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear. Wilder's third directorial work after a comedy and a propaganda film tells the story of a murder fuelled by greed and passion. What was new was that the perpetrators were not professional criminals, but ordinary citizens and that the female lead did not play the good part or the victim, but the cold-blooded murderess. The émigré Wilder established himself by breaking new ground from the American perspective: he utilised style elements of the European cinema of the 1920s.

The film was nominated for Oscars in seven categories, but did not win in any of them – the big winner in that year was Going My Way by Leo McCarey.