Publisher's Synopsis
Four film noir classics. In 'Gilda' (1946), gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is shocked when his boss and best friend Ballin (George Macready) asks him to keep an eye on his beautiful new wife Gilda (Rita Hayworth), for the two were previously lovers. Gilda taunts Johnny and attempts to get him in trouble with her husband but when Ballin apparently dies in a plane crash, Johnny marries Gilda and treats her badly as punishment. In Nicholas Ray's classic 'In a Lonely Place' (1950), Humphrey Bogart plays a heavy drinking, brawling and tormented screenwriter who becomes implicated in a murder charge. While under suspicion, he gets embroiled with a Hollywood star (Gloria Grahame). There was some speculation that the central relationship between Bogart and Grahame reflected Ray's own disintegrating marriage with the star. 'The Killers' (1946) is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. After boxer Swede (Burt Lancaster) is gunned down by a pair of contract killers, insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien) sets about piecing together the motives behind the murder. Swede's story is revealed in flashback - how he became involved in the crime world of Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), only to be seduced into armed robbery by Colfax's glamorous moll, Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). 'Double Indemnity' (1943) is an adaptation of James M. Cain's hardboiled noir novel directed by Billy Wilder with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) calls at the house of femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in order to renew her husband's insurance policy. An immediate attraction sparks between the two, and gradually Phyllis seduces Walter into conspiring with her to murder her husband, now provided with a double indemnity insurance clause. The murder is carried out as planned, but the couple then find themselves growing increasingly suspicious of each other as they get closer to collecting the money. When Walter's boss, relentless investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), starts to look into the policy, Walter and Phyllis' steely resolve begins to falter.
