The Letter is a 1940 American film noir directed by William Wyler, and starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall and James Stephenson. The screenplay by Howard E. Koch is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham.
I found out about it thanks to Dolores López who recommended it to me, and it was pure delight. Here's a brief synopsis from 2,500 Movies Challenge:
Based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter tells the story of Leslie (Davis), the wife of wealthy plantation owner Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall). In the film’s opening scene, Leslie shoots and kills Geoff Hammond (David Newell), a man she claims attempted to rape her. But as her attorney, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson) delves deeper into the case, he discovers Leslie and Hammond were, in reality, having an affair, and that an incriminating letter Leslie wrote to Hammond, in which she laid out her true feelings for him, is currently in the possession of Hammond’s widow (Gale Sondergaard). At Leslie’s insistence, Joyce tries to buy back the letter in order to destroy it, but can they keep its contents a secret from Robert?
I recommend browsing some of the external reviews, since they mostly agree on the quality of the film and the subjects it touches upon: adultery, murder, work ethics, colonialism, marriage and the lives of women.
The opening scene is a masterpiece: a moonlit plantation where we hear several shots and focus successively first on a cockatoo, then the workers, the house, the victim and finally the killer. It concentrates all the main motifs that are later developed in the film: the contrast between the English and the Malayans, conventions and contempt, rituals, masked subservience and calmness.
The movie is well-paced, the acting is superlative (especially, Davis), and the symbolism of the house walls, the knife, Leslie's lacework, and the letter, leave you thinking long after the movie is over.
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