Amazing!! The story is incredibly intricate on-point performance and timing in both the blocking, music cues and camerawork. The actors hit their marks perfectly in this complex film and deliver very poignant performances. The story is very engaging, the camera movements and lighting display the themes of imprisonment and impending doom, foreshadowing the failure of the couple’s murder venture. And for a stylistic effect the lighting very much casts a sense of criminality and underworld into ordinary rooms.
One of the greatest movies ever made. This put Billy Wilder on the map and is one of the classics. Again, we're seeing this embrace of the anti-hero, villain as the protagonist with lighting that complements that idea of looking into the inner darkness of mankind and revealing how it is everyday and not just the realm of fiction. This movie really forces you as the audience to confront your own moral compass because the heroes of this film are in fact the villains. It's not a case of identifying with the villain like in Shadow of a Doubt because the only foil to them is the police officer investigating them. The actual literal protagonist of the film who you go on a journey with is a killer and villain. This is one of the films from Film Noir that really push American movies into this moral grey area arguably for the better of cinematic exploration.
This film makes great use of the shadows of shades being thrown onto the actors and the set to create the theme or notion of imprisonment and bars falling on their faces. That stylistic lighting approach of shining a light through window blinds and shades will become a cliché aspect of film noir lighting.