“Their Love Was a Flame That Destroyed!” James M. Cain’s 1934 novel—essentially the blueprint for noir—was so hot, and so wrong, it took Hollywood twelve years to figure out how to put it on the screen, heat intact. It helped to have Lana Turner and John Garfield playing the sex-starved, ill-fated lovers who plot her husband’s murder. A huge hit in 1946, it remains one of the most revered films in the genre, and would be the progenitor of thousands of “erotic thrillers” to follow.