Dr. A and I finally saw David Fincher’s Gone Girl last weekend. It’s neo-noir at its finest, featuring a really wicked femme fatale, and a really weak, weasely man. They were characters straight out of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity. It was as if Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson got married and things went very, very badly.

Double Indemnity is one of those rare novels that is just as good on the big screen as it is on the printed page. It helped to have Billy Wilder directing the movie. Raymond Chandler also worked on the screenplay but it was Wilder ‘s lethal baby.

Here are two variations on the book cover:

I had a reproduction of the movie poster on the wall of my room when I was a teenager. It could explain a lot, at least I gave up smoking years ago.

Here are two, count ’em two, lobby cards:

Here’s the trailer:

Finally, here’s Raymond Chandler’s cameo. He’s the meek looking little man sitting outside Eddie Robinson’s office: