Postfeminism and the Fatale Figure in Neo-Noir Cinema

Samantha Lindop

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137503596
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de género

This book is a thought-provoking study that expands on film scholarship on noir and feminist scholarship on postfeminism, subjectivity, and representation to provide an inclusive, sophisticated, and up-to-date analysis of the femme fatale, fille fatale, and homme fatal from the classic era through to recent postmillennial neo-noir.

1

What Makes Those Dames So Deadly?

Though not essential to classic film noir, the femme fatale is certainly highly prominent and undoubtedly memorable. The archetype of the fabled deadly woman has appeared under many guises throughout the centuries (Pandora, Medusa, Sirens, Vampires). But regardless of what form she takes, she is consistently characterised as an iniquitous creature that has the power to seduce and destroy men. In patriarchal Western culture this positions her, above all else, as a manifestation of male anxiety. But why is the fatale of 1940s and 1950s noir so prominent? What fears is the figure representative of? And how do these apprehensions link to broader socio-cultural dynamics at the time? While these questions have previously been considered by eminent scholars in the field, in this chapter I take a fresh look as the femme fatale. In doing so, I challenge some of the assumptions attached to the character, specifically her representative significance in the context of the cultural climate, shifting gender dynamics, and the position of women in the public sphere during and after World War II. I argue that despite popular contention that the spider woman is symbolic of the independent working woman, a textual analysis of the character does not support this.

I begin the chapter by outlining the compositional elements of the dark lady, including the way she is framed and depicted, along with the kinds of iconography and motifs attached to the figure. To date, psychoanalysis has been the foremost method for exploring underlying meanings attached to the fatale figure. Because of the centrality of this mode of analysis in contextualising both the femme fatale and film noir in general, I next unpack the discourses relating to it. Following this, I track the deadly woman back to early cinema and the vamp, exploring the parallels between these two very similar characters in the framework of the socio-economic conditions from which they evolved. I then critically analyse the socio-cultural underpinnings of femme fatale, situating the figure in relation to actual working women of film noir. Finally, I explore the deadly woman in relation to ageing and race – two themes that are significant in the context of postfeminist discourse.

Sensual seductresses and human tarantulas

In Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945), Al (Tom Neal) makes a risky decision. His travelling companion has dropped dead, but rather than report it to the authorities he steals the man’s identity, along with his car, and buries him in the scrub just off a lonely highway. Everything is going smoothly until he pulls into a gas station and offers a lift to a woman standing beside the road. ‘How far you going?’ he asks her. ‘How far you going?’ she retorts, surly and sour faced. This response takes him by surprise, he has a bad feeling about her, but when she falls asleep he attributes her rudeness to exhaustion and begins to feel sorry for her instead. Contemplating her, he decides that she is beautiful. Not like the beauty of a movie actress, but attractive in a natural, almost homely way. Suddenly she wakes up and pounces at him like an angry cat: ‘Where did you leave his body? Where did you leave the owner of this car?’ she demands. So begins Al’s fateful encounter with domineering, alcoholic femme fatale, Vera (Ann Savage). Hard-boiled, shrewd, and knowing that dim witted Al has little choice but to oblige, Vera seizes the opportunity to make some money. She demands that upon arriving in Los Angeles he sell the car and give her all of the proceeds. Until this happens Vera makes Al a virtual prisoner by refusing to let him out of her sight. However, things go horribly wrong when Vera sees a chance to make even more money out of the dead man. Her greed infuriates Al and in a drunken confrontation with her he accidentally strangles Vera with a telephone cord, sealing his fate as a doomed man.

Turning now to another classic noir, in The Killers, Ole Andreson (Burt Lancaster), also known as the ‘Swede’, and his sweet, attractive, but rather plain girlfriend Lilly (Virginia Christine) walk into a party. Seated at the piano is a dark haired woman. The cut of her black satin gown reveals most of her back, drawing attention to her shapely figure, accentuating her sexuality. She turns, and even though there are several people in the frame the camera draws the spectator’s gaze, in line with that of an instantly besotted Ole, through the crowd to her like a magnet. Her name is Kitty Collins (played by Ava Gardner). She is very glamorous and seductive, but she is also a sly, highly manipulative thief and con artist. Ole has no qualms about dumping Lilly for Kitty, but it is a choice that eventually leads to his destruction. Blinded by love, he goes to prison for Kitty’s crime (stealing a large diamond encrusted brooch ironically shaped like a spider). Upon his release he becomes embroiled with Kitty again. This time she uses him as a pawn in an elaborate plan to double-cross a group of thieves and gangsters. Eventually she is caught but not before Ole is murdered at her expense (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) occupies the centre of the frame, commanding the focus of the gaze (The Killers, Siodmak, 1946)

Like film noir itself, the dark lady who hovers in its shadowy recesses appears in many forms, a point highlighted by the contrast between Kitty Collins and Vera. When the audience is first introduced to Kitty, she is presented as overtly feminine and erotic, confidently using the power of her sexuality as a means to an end. To this extent she aligns closely with characters such as Cora Smith (Lana Turner) in Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Gilda (Rita Hayworth) in Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946). Visually, these fatales are shot in soft-focus, with diffused lighting so as to accentuate their beauty and sexuality (as well as the star status of the actresses who play them). They are often filmed in long or medium-long shot, allowing for contemplation of their shapely figures and are highly stylised.¹

On the other hand, Vera’s desirability, although not entirely wasted on Al, is overshadowed by her hard-hitting and aggressive attitude, her alcoholism, and the fact that she is sick with consumption. As James Naremore observes, Vera makes ‘every femme fatale of the period look genteel by comparison’ (1998, p. 149). Rather than seducing him, she forces Al to become her captive audience in a similar vein to spider woman Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who entraps unwitting screenwriter Joseph Gillis (William Holden) in her inescapable web of psychosis in Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950). Lying somewhere in between these two extremes of sensual seductress and human tarantula lies fatales like the cunning Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity, who derives power from her sexuality but is, as Hirsch describes her, ‘a figure of Machiavellian evil, chilling and reptilian’ (2001, p. 4). Kitty March (Joan Bennett) in Scarlet Street can also be placed somewhere in the middle. She is seductive and manipulative but less sophisticated and much more street savvy and hard-boiled than characters like Kitty Collins and Cora. In contrast to Kitty Collins, Cora, and Gilda, deadly women such as Vera, Phyllis, and Norma are shot using direct, unfiltered lighting that is as uncompromising as soft key illumination is flattering, drawing attention to their coldness and cynicism. In reference to Double Indemnity, Janey Place and Lowell Peterson argue that non-diffused lighting gives Phyllis a hard-edged, mask-like surface beauty that is ‘at once alluring and impenetrable’ (1996, p. 66). In Detour, Vera is frequently shot in close-up and medium close-up using unfiltered, low-key lighting. She is also noticeably less stylised than many other femmes fatales. This conveys not only the grittiness of her personality, but makes her illness and alcoholism more palpable.

These differences aside, there are certain ingredients that are synonymous with the femme fatale, the most profound of which is the figure’s ability to bring ruin and misery (in some form or another) to the men who cross her path. Although Al and Ole are troubled characters, who are not averse to operating outside the realms of the law, it is their chance meeting with a fatale that seals their fate. The use of flashback to recollect these inauspicious encounters is central to both films. In The Killers, the details of Ole’s life are reconstructed through the recollections of the various people insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) interviews in relation to his murder. These include Ole’s former girlfriend Lilly and his friend Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (who later marries Lilly). Detour is narrated from the perspective of the doomed protagonist himself, by means of internal voice-over and memory sequences. This mode of narration, revealing events from the antihero’s point-of-view is common to many noirs including Sunset Boulevard, where the events leading up to Joseph’s murder are related by him post-mortem. Similarly, in Double Indemnity a dying Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) recounts his involvement with Phyllis through flashback where he reveals their elaborate plan to murder her husband and collect the insurance money. A plot that, although initially successful, rapidly begins to fall apart, cumulating in Walter and Phyllis shooting each other.

The use of flashback cements themes of predetermined fate and intensifies a sense of hopelessness, as does the non-diegetic orchestral sound score that changes tempo, pitch, and mood in accordance with the male protagonist’s emotional state. Dark rainy settings, ominous shadows, and oblique camera angles further set the tone. But while the audience is given access to the antihero’s subjective experiences, the femme fatale that he becomes embroiled with is kept at a narrative distance and framed entirely from his perspective. In fact, it is rare to find a scene where she is alone and not positioned directly in relation to him. Though female point-of-view is certainly explored in noir, as it is in Mildred Pierce, the Gothic woman’s thriller, and female investigator noirs for example, it is rarely the deadly woman’s perspective that is taken (a point that becomes significant throughout the course of this book).

Even though the weak, corruptible antihero so frequently pays the ultimate price for his involvement with the dark woman, she invariably becomes as much a casualty of her own schemes as the fated men who fall under her spell do, as Borde and Chaumeton observe: ‘Frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet ensnared, she falls victim to her own traps’ (1996, p. 22). Detour, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai (1947) are just some of the better known films of the era where this theme is especially resonant. As I explore in more detail later in the chapter, predicaments such as those experienced by women like Vera, Cora, Phyllis and Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) in The Lady From Shanghai have led Julie Grossman (2009) to argue that the femme fatale is a sympathetic character that is reflective of the often desperate social and economic conditions of women at the time. In fact, Norma Desmond, who craves fame above anything else, is one of the few deadly women of the classic era not to be driven for a desire for wealth.

Central ingredients of the noir spider woman also take the form of various iconography and motifs. One of the most pronounced is her ubiquitous cigarette that, as Place argues, becomes a cue for dark and immoral sensuality as well as a symbol, along with the gun she often carries in her purse, of her ‘unnatural’ phallic power (1998, p. 54). Another dominant motif that is often associated with the figure is that of mirrors and portraits. The image of the deadly woman gazing at her reflection in the mirror or standing alongside her portrait can be observed in many classic noirs. Kitty Collins is shown regarding herself in a mirror as she embarks on the plot to con Ole into stealing the takings of a payroll robbery. In Gilda and Double Indemnity the femme fatale is frequently found admiring her own reflection. Kitty in Scarlet Street is presented beside her mirror double as she reveals to Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) that she never loved him and was only using him for his money. Similarly, The Woman in the Window and Laura show the real woman and her image side by side (although, as discussed later in the chapter, Laura is actually not a fatale at all). In the film detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) becomes obsessed with Laura’s portrait before the real Laura (played by Gene Tierney) unexpectedly appears. The Woman in the Window centres on a portrait of a beautiful woman that gives rise to a dramatic fantasy in which the fatale figure inadvertently destroys the life of meek psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson). Sunset Boulevard depicts an excess of both mirrors and portraits, making Joseph feel as if Norma is watching his every move. But it is The Lady From Shanghai that features the most powerful use of the mirror motif. The spectacular final scenes of the movie are played out in the ‘magic mirror maze’ of a deserted theme park. The mirrors are arranged in such a way that the reflections are endlessly repeated, then in a blaze of gunfire, mirror after mirror shatters, leaving the spider woman cowering in a sea of glass, looking exposed and pathetic. Place (1998, p. 58) proposes that a possible meaning of the mirror motif in film noir is to indicate the duplicitous nature of the dark lady. Such images imply that she is split, thus not to be trusted in a universe where no one and nothing is what it seems. This explains why fatale Elsa is so conspicuously exposed, like a vampire trapped in the sun, when all the mirrors, representative of her many façades, disintegrate. Place also suggests that the deadly woman gazing into the mirror, ignoring the man she will use to achieve her goals, symbolises her self-absorbed narcissism, which is an original sin of the noir universe (1998, p. 57).

Although the femme fatale is (for the most part) an overtly sexual character, it is important to note that film noir emerged at a time when the Hollywood Motion Picture Code, or Hays Code as it was commonly known (in reference to chief censor Will H. Hays), was in full force. Introduced in 1930 (although not enforced until 1934) and upheld well into the late 1950s before finally being replaced by a ratings system in 1968, the aim of the code was to restore the moral integrity of Hollywood that staunchly conservative Catholics, such as the head of the Studio Relations Committee Joseph Breen, felt had disintegrated (Doherty, 1999, pp. 339–46). Some of the central principles stipulated by the code were that no picture should lower the moral standards of the audience, that ‘evil’ must not appear attractive nor must sympathy be thrown on the side of crime, wrongdoing, or sin. Thus, the fatal woman is never shown to get away with any transgressions. She is either punished (often with death) or it is discovered that she is innocent after all (as in Gilda and Laura). The code also placed restrictions on plot material involving social, political, or sexually offensive themes, adultery, vulgarity, obscenity, nudity or semi-nudity, brothels and dances such as the ‘can-can’. Therefore, despite it being quite clear that Kitty March is a prostitute, it can only be inferred in the movie, and while characters such as Christopher Cross cheat on their (often highly unappealing) wives, they suffer terribly in the end.

The femme fatale and psychoanalytic theory

The destabilising and dangerous nature of the femme fatale, combined with her overwhelming sexual power has led to a critical preoccupation with the deeper psychosocial implications of the character. By far, the prevailing scholarly view is that the deadly woman of noir is representative of the liberated, independent woman, functioning as an expression of anxieties about the shifting gender roles over the last century. In patriarchal Western culture women are defined in relation to men, thus the strong, sexually assertive woman who strives for wealth, independence, or fame is seen as a threat to male domination. In this context, the dark lady’s exciting but malevolent presence on screen can be considered a manifestation of fears that institutionalised patriarchal hegemony is under attack. As Elisabeth Bronfen argues: ‘one could speak of her as a male fantasy, articu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Beyond the Limits of Noir Scholarship
• 1 What Makes Those Dames So Deadly?
• 2 The New Fatale: 1980–1999
• 3 Mad, Bad, and Queer
• 4 Con-Artists, Valkyries, and Revenge Seekers
• 5 What Are (Fatal) Little Girls Made of?
• 6 Playtime Is Over
• 7 Duplicity, Desire, and the Deadly Man
• 8 Turning the Spotlight on the Homme Fatal
• Notes
• Selected Filmography
• Works Cited
• Index