The film trailer starts with the main character, the hardboiled private eye, being interviewed by the police, who seem a bit corrupt and shady. They are asking him about a murder, and the atmosphere is menacing, with suspenseful music being played in the background. It then goes on to the credits, with bold white writing flashing up on screen, and more loud music, that identifies the film as a detective film. After that, there is a vocal narrative in a tough, American accented voice that you identify with that of the main character. The camera pans around a building until you see him sat in his office, talking to someone on the phone. His face is half in shadow, slightly distorted through the glass of his window. There is a short scene of what he can see through his window, flashing neon lights from different shops. You can identify the location in a sprawling city that will probably turn into a sort of maze later in the film.
The next scene is in another location, a smart, wealthy room that contrasts with the office that we first saw the private eye in. The room is filled with chairs and well-off looking lamps and other knick-knacks. The private eye is standing in the center of the scene, holding hands with a woman who you immediately see as the femme fatale of the film. Half of the room, the one with the private eye standing in, is darker than the half that the woman is standing in, distinction made clearer by the fact that the man is wearing black, and the woman is dressed in white. The woman is smoking, something that makes is clearer that she is from a more upper-class background than the man. They are about to kiss when a young woman, identified by the vocal narrative as the step-daughter walks in on them, then walks back out, slamming the door.
The scene then cuts to a scene between the step-daughter, who seems very shady with her head wreathed in darkness and making a proposition to the private eye to forget