The Double Indemnity and The Hitch-Hiker had their subtle similarities but to me they were very different. The D.I. had a female lead and played very much on the influence of the femme fatale, where as the The H.H. had all male characters and focused more on the power struggle between the captives and the captor. Also, the settings were much much different, in the D.I. we only see a few places around the city, but in the H.H. we see massive landscape scenes in the desert and small towns. Finally, looking at the aspects of the crime, in the D.I. we actually are a party to the murder, and in the H.H. the crimes happen in the beginning and that's really all, there is not actually murder during the length of the movie. These differences may have been a difference in style because of the director being a female, she probably didn't want a female character so that she could avoid the femme fatale character. Also, the male dominant cast actually creates some room for higher physical conflict which doesn't occur except for a few moments when Collins just cant take it anymore. Finally, we see actually detectives in this film not just a insurance man following a lead, making this an actual detective film.
The similarities were really only in the basics. The format is all the same, lead characters fall into a crime, and the a detective works to solve the crime, before another crime occurs. This is entertaining of course, but the most interesting scenes are the scenes that differ from traditional film noir style that I mentioned before.
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