Richard Schickel

The definitive illustrated retrospective on the Oscar-winning director of some of the most resonant and enduring films of all time. For more than five decades, Steven Spielberg has created inspiring, exciting, and unforgettable movie magic. Jaws, E.T., the Indiana Jones series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and West Side Story are among the many...

Richard Schickel’s study of Billy Wilder’s 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity traces in fascinating detail the genesis and realisation of the film: its literary origins in James M. Cain’s hard-boiled crime novel, the difficult relations between Wilder and his scriptwriter Raymond Chandler, the casting of a reluctant Fred MacMurray, and the late decision to cut the expensively filmed execution sequence...

A new kind of film emerged from Hollywood in the early 1940s, thrillers that derived their plots from the hard-boiled school of crime fiction but with a style all their own. Appearing in 1944, Double Indemnity was a key film in the definition of the genre that came to be known as film noir. Its script creates two unforgettable criminal...