took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received). Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. Brackett described their collaboration process: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler." "Wilder followed Ninotchka with a series of box office hits in 1942, including Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, and his directorial debut film The Major and the Minor. 1940s His third film as director, the film noir Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, was a major hit. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress; Wilder co-wrote it with Raymond Chandler. The film not only set conventions for the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but is a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. Based on James M. Cain's novel, it featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. While the book was popular with the reading public, it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code because adultery was central to the plot. In 1945, the Psychological Warfare Department of the United States Department of War produced an American documentary film directed by Wilder. The film known as Death Mills, or Die Todesmühlen, was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanuš Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version. Two years later, Wilder adapted from Charles R. Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend into a film of the same name. It was the first major American film with a serious examination of alcoholism, another difficult theme under the Production Code. It follows an alcoholic writer (Ray Milland) opposing the protestations of his girlfriend (Jane Wyman). The film earned critical acclaim, after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and competed in the main competition, where it received the Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, and four Academy