Film Noir
...aring only a towel. She is up high on an internal balcony, suggesting that she is a woman that is used to being admired by men. The second shot of her also suggests this because as she is descending the stairs the camera closes in on her bare legs with an anklet around one ankle. As with many other femme fatales the camera is used as a tool to give the woman power. Karen Hollinger says, “The iconography of the femme fatale grants these beautiful, provocative women visual primacy through shot composition as well as camera positioning, movement, and lighting. (246) Film noir quickly conveys the heavy sexual presence of the femme fatale by introducing her as a fully established object in the hero’s obsession. Thus, according to Janey Place, the femme fatale's visual and sexual dominance are felt from her very first scene, which of course signifies the potential threat that this woman poses. The femme fatale is often characterised by her typically long, beautiful legs. Detour (1945), however, presents a slightly different case. Vera, the main female lead is a very unusual femme fatale. Unlike the classical ‘spider woman’ she does not use her sexuality as a means of getting what she wants. This becomes obvious after we find out that Vera is in fact the same woman who scratched Haskell. Vera is also not classically beautiful as is Phyllis - we are told this by Al after he first picks her up. He says she has a ‘natural beauty’ as though we need to be told that she is in fact beautiful. There are only two points in the film where Vera is sexualised. When she is standing on the side of the road, hitchhiking, we see her figure in the distance and she is standing in a feminine, seductive way. Another instance is when she tries to make a pass at Al in the hotel room. Her face is flooded with light and she looks almost beautiful, trying to sound seductive she nearly transforms herself in to the femme fatale that is she expected to be. However, it only lasts for a second and she then converts back into the hard, annoying and very unmysterious woman that we have seen in the rest of the film. Unlike Phyllis, who uses Neff the insurance salesman to plan everything, Vera is the mastermind behind their one scheme which never actually eventuates. This switch in roles between Vera and Al is interesting as it makes Al into a helpless, bystander enforcing the idea that Vera is indeed a femme fatale who can get what she wants. The idea that the woman is partly in control of the narrative is contradicted by the presence of the male voice over narration. It gives the impression that it is trying to “control the female image” but it instead creates an awkward juxtaposition between the “femme fatale’s dominant visual presence and the male voice.” (Hollinger 246-47) Hollinger also believes that by their narration of the past events, the male protagonist is attempting to find truth - not so much about their masculinity, but instead about femininity. “Finding the essential nature of female difference, which is often symbolised in female sexuality,” is what Hollinger argues, these films are really concerned with. Film theorists have also used the psychoanalytic theory of the phallic women to explain the femme fatale. (Creed 81) Voice overs also serve to place the hero as the “victim rather than the attempted victimizer, of the dangerous femme fatale.” (Hollinger 250) Rejecting the conventional roles of devoted wife and loving mother that is usually attributed to women in film at the time, the transgression of social norms leads to the femme fatale’s inevitable destruction, which usually involves the downfall of the men who are attracted to her. Therefore film noir seems to support existing social norms and it seems to extend a common gender stereotype - building up the powerful, independent woman but eventually punishing her in the end. Janey Place agrees that film noir often tends to destroy the independent woman as a moral lesson to the audience and to the males characters who fall under her spell. “The ideological operation of the myth (the absolute necessity of controlling the strong, sexual woman) is thus achieved by first demonstrating her dangerous power and its frightening results, then destroying it. (Place 56) Thus Film Noir emphasises the castration threat that independent women represent for men. This is extremely apparent in both Double Indemnity(1944) and Detour (1945). Although Vera and Phyllis are two very different femme fatales, the power that they exert has the same disastrous effects. Both men that become their victims (Neff and Al) are also ultimately punished for dealing with such women. Neff, because he thought they were in love and he was saving Phyllis. And Al, because he was just to weak to try and stop Vera. However, the fact that it is the male figure who in the end kills or ‘destroys’ the female, is an attempt by the film to redeem this man who has shown so much weakness. This attempt however is not very successful. Instead we seem to remember the exciting nature of the woman. She leaves behind the image of a strong, exciting and unrepentant woman who defies the control of men and rejects the institution of family. Noir films create this image of the strong unrepressed woman and then attempts to contain it by destroying the femme fatale or converting her to traditional womanhood. Place suggests that the femme fatale effectively undermines the supremacy of the traditional family and it’s values in spite of her final punishment or conversion. Place agrees, asserting that the audience remembers the nontraditional female as free and powerful, not as punished and neutralized: “It is not their inevitable demise we remember, but rather their strong, dangerous, and above all exciting sexuality...the final lesson of the myth often fades into the background and we retain the image of the erotic, strong, unrepressed (even if destructive) woman. The style of these films thus overwhelms their conventional narrative content, or interacts with it to produce a remarkably potent image of a woman. Despite the ritual punishment acts of transgression, the vitality with which these acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be contained.” (Place 48) Film noir ultimately reinforces the male dominated family by destroying the femme fatale who threatens the established order. Double Indemnity (1944) depicts the violation against the institution of the family that involves a malcontent wife who, with the help of an insurance salesman, murders her husband. Sylvia Harvey states that: “It is no accident that Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944) seeks an escape from the dull routine of the insurance company that he works for, in an affair with the deadly and exotic Phyllis Dietrichson. The possession of Dietrichson, as of any of the other f...