Film Noir’s Femme Fatales: Not Bad, Just Drawn That Way
The concept of the dangerous woman is one that has long been perpetuated in film and is one of the defining aspects of the elusive genre of film noir. If a film is to fall into the category of the film noir, we’ve come to expect a mysterious and beautiful woman to charm a hardy man and ensnare him in her trap. These temptresses are viewed with a love-hate mentality, and much of the controversy around the femme fatale figure is the question of whether or not she was a challenger of existing gender roles or was she merely a projection of male anxieties of female independence?
It is easy to see the femme fatales as these great icons of female complexity- women weren’t just expected to be the love interests, but instead were afforded the opportunity to be the villain. Femme Fatales are “not only sexually uninhibited, but also unabashedly independent and ruthlessly ambitious, using [their] seductive charms and intelligence to liberate [themselves] from the imprisonment of an unfulfilling marriage” (Bronfen, 106). While this is certainly the case for a number of noir’s femme fatales- like Phyllis of Double Indemnity, Kitty of Scarlet Street, or Kathie of Out of the Past- it is important to take into consideration how such independence is received, or rather, punished. The independence that femme fatales exert does not go unchecked by cultural norms that be, and we often see that she is killed for deviating from conventional definitions of femininity.
Film noir often presents the bifurcation of women, in that there is “good” woman and there is the “bad woman” (typically synonymous with the femme fatale.) This binary opposition of women within film noir serves to reinforce the patriarchal culture by simplifying the actions of women and idealizing the accepted forms of femininity. The possible complexity of the femme fatale is removed and instead of the opportunity to be seen as three dimensional. She is entirely defined by male anxieties. She is the embodiment of the “evil” female, which is further fortified through the presence of “good” woman.
Such binary opposition is exemplified in films, to name a few, such as Detour with Vera and Sue, Out of the Past with Kathie and Ann, and, to a certain extent, in Mildred Pierce with Veda and Mildred. The direct contrast between Vera and Sue reinforces this binary and undermines the possibility to understand her manipulation of Al and her greed as symptoms of larger cultural problems of poverty. Instead, we see Ann Savage’s crazed eyes and shrill voice as a physical representation as the dangers of female independence, which is, ultimately, the cause of her death. Vera embodies male anxieties of female independence by the means of removing the sense of authority that is ingrained in traditional masculinity. The opposition of Kathie and Ann is perhaps the most evident example of the binary understanding of women within film noir, as Bailey struggles to avoid the sexual temptation of Kathie and preserve his relationship with Ann. Ann is the sweet and domestically driven woman he meets in his attempt to create a new life for himself.
Similarly, by assigning Kathie the typical dangerous femme fatale that leads the male protagonist to his doom, she is reduced to a caricature of female independence as seen through the male gaze with no room to read her in a sympathetic light. At one point Kathie asks Bailey “Can’t you even feel sorry for me?” to which he replies, “I’m not going to try,” which speaks to noir’s tendency to simplify women. As the femme fatale, Kathie is denied the complexity of her male counterpart.
To a certain degree we see this binary opposition between the “good” woman and the femme fatale play out in Mildred Pierce through Mildred herself and her daughter Veda. As perhaps the most financially driven woman in all of noir, Veda acts as a version of a femme fatale that reflects the perceptions of selfishness of female independence that destroys herself and those around her. Veda is put into direct contrast with Mildred, who appears to be a depiction of a lost woman who finds her way again. Mildred attempts to experience sexual freedom(her relationship with Monte) and economic freedom (a successful business) and, as such, faces a degree of punishment for such desires. It’s her eventual return to a more acceptable sense of freedom and domesticity that allows for Mildred to be seen as the “good” woman of the film by the end of the film.
Such is the case with Kitty in The Scarlet Street who violates the “good” girl image that Chris projects onto, and consequently she must die because of Johnny’s manipulation and scheming. Ultimately, the division between the “good” and the “bad” woman serves not only to simplify women in numerous ways but to also reinforce a patriarchal culture by creating images of women solely through the eyes of men and their anxieties.
Thus we see that the femme fatale is typically depicted as malevolent sexually driven women who have “a sexual entity with the capacity to drain men’s vital powers” (Hales, 227). Their sexual promiscuity and their sexual manipulation of men gives them a sense of agency, which is almost always undermined by the punishment that arises as a result of it. The male protagonists are typically intrigued and drawn to such sexual freedom initially, but as the story progresses and the protagonists lose their sense of control they are quick to condemn it. The sexual freedom of femme fatales thus exists in an inbetween state of being attractive and being a representation of evil.
For example, the sexual aggression of Carmen of The Big Sleep or Kathie in Out of the Past is seen negatively, but the countless unwelcome passes that Wally makes to Mildred is interpreted as love. Rita Hayworth’s Gilda represents this hypocrisy of the desired and rejected sexually independent woman and as such acts as the femme fatale of her own self-entitled film. Gilda’s image of sexuality is blatant but, ultimately, her “unrestrained female sexuality constituted a danger” (Doane, 11) and had to be deconstructed by the end of the film. Immediately following her famous striptease-like performance the last scene we see her she is in rather conservative clothing, suggesting that her unrestrained female sexuality is simply performative. Thus, “the narrative itself takes the form of a stiptease, peeling away the layers of Gilda’s disguises in order to reveal the ‘good’ woman underneath, the one who will ‘go home’ with Johnny” (Doane, 15). The agency that Gilda, and many other femme fatales, achieves by manipulating her own image is undermined by the ending, in which Johnny’s abuse, both physical and emotional, is equalized with Gilda’s supposed infidelity that undermined Johnny’s masculinity. Despite the fact that it is revealed that there is no truth behind the accusations of Gilda’s infidelity and it was, in the words of the detective, “just an act…every bit of it,” it is suggested to be on the same level as Johnny’s abuse. Her sexual freedom is simplified to be merely performative and she can, once again, be considered a “good” girl.
Even in noirs in which the protagonist is female and the argument can be made that there is no tradition femme fatale the perpetuation of patriarchal values underlies the narrative. Mildred Pierce, in particular, falls victim to the same reductive ending that we see in Gilda, as she flirts with both the domestic sphere and one that is driven by freedom and fails to truly find a place in either. Initially, Mildred states “I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I’d be born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married” and it is during her deviation from this sphere in pursuit of economic and sexual freedom that Mildred loses two husbands and both her children. Like Gilda, she is punished for her independence and in the final scene she walks off with her first husband, Bert. They pass “two charwomen cleaning the floor on their hands and knees — served to reassert the patriarchal authority that Mildred’s filmic behavior had threatened” (Weiss, 77). Her independence and pursuit of liberation from the confines of existing gender roles falls flat, and after her two children are taken away she returns to her husband in a way that undermines her agency. Thus, it is vital to note that Gilda and Mildred Pierce, both films concerned with the story of two women, hint at a degree of the representation of an independent woman deconstructed by the ending of the films.
Ultimately, the femme fatale, much like the genre she exists in, is by no means a fixed figure. She evolves and differs across the genre but in terms of understanding what the femme fatale represents generally, it is apparent that in response to male anxieties she comes to embody them. Born out of a desire to mend a failing patriarchal system within the United States and abroad, the femme fatale exists as a figure that tempts the male protagonist and manipulates him and, as such, is punished both his and her actions. The femme fatale is a product of the male imagination, whether it be the protagonists or the directors, and, as a result, claims concerning her independence must take the historical context of her birth into consideration.
Works Cited
Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Femme Fatale — Negotiations of Tragic Desire.” New Literary History 35.1 (2004): 103–16. Web.
Doane, M. A. “Gilda: Epistemology as Striptease.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 4.2 11 (1983): 6–27. Web.
Hales, Barbara. “Projecting Trauma: The Femme Fatale in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir”. Women in German Yearbook 23 (2007): 224–243. Web.
Jancovich, Mark. “”VICIOUS WOMANHOOD”: GENRE, THE “FEMME FATALE” AND POSTWAR AMERICA”. Revue Canadienne d’Études cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies 20.1 (2011): 100–114. Web.
Weiss, Julie. “Feminist Film Theory and Women’s History: Mildred Pierce and the Twentieth Century.” Film & History 22.3 (1992): 74–87. Print.