Femme Fatale to Homme Fatale

          Film noir of the 1940s and 1950s in many ways empowered women by showing them making daring decisions that contradicted the projected roles that society wanted them to play. But the payback for the femme fatales of the era, dictated by the patriarchal society and censors, required them to pay for their crimes with their lives. Joyce Carol Oates clarifies her question “Is there a female noir?” by explaining that “There are neuroanatomical differences in female and male beings, as there are obvious physiological differences between the sexes, but these differences are modulated by countless other factors – genetic inheritance, familial upbringing, education, culture, and environment.” Could the way we think and act as women, restrict our ability to create our own noir or will it always be dominated by the male perspective?  The social movements of the sixties shifted the balance of the environment for women; the Sexual Revolution fueled by birth control pills, the Feminist Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement. They all provided the beginnings of change for women - although they are by no means yet fully realized - and the neo noir femme fatales no longer had to pay for their indiscretions with their lives. One could argue this alone is a strong indication of their higher degree of empowerment, but they were still limited.

          The neo noir of the 1970s-90s could be simplified as a technical upgrade to film noir with a few additions; color film, less-restricted censorship, bigger budgets, a director’s craving for retro and stylistics of a by-gone age, or a writer’s urge to tell cultural stories that couldn’t be spoken in their own era. There is no doubt a change in the many factors that Oates suggest can impact the stereotypical behavior of the sexes, but it is only when we turn to the new century, that we really start to experience the potential for the ‘female noir.’

          Traditional film noir has a California urban setting, with lighting techniques often portraying the darkness of the plot and characters; ‘good’ girls are often well-lit, or ‘not-so-good-girls’ lit well in their earlier scenes, but as the plot develops, the darker lighting and hues of their clothing, begin to show us their true characters are much blacker. Voice-over narration and flashbacks are often used to directly provide backstories for the characters, and fill-in-blanks for the audience. The emotional entanglements between a femme fatale and an outsider male protagonist demonstrate moral ambiguity. Their circumstances often portrayed a troubled marriage but rarely any family life – particularly the femme fatales who appear to have no familial support group to provide a moral upbringing. Unlike the typical crime movie gangsters, film noir’s ‘criminal’ is often dragged into crimes of passion by the femme fatale, who is fighting for some sense of independence in a post-war society. The plots of these movies reflect the dark side of American life that had failed to achieve the American Dream, leaving all parties involved attempting desperate crimes that failed abysmally, generally ending in death for one or all. But as Nino Frank described the early film noir in 1946, “They are essentially psychological narratives with action – however violent or fast-paced – less significant than faces, gestures, words – than the truth of the characters…” and it is one of the traits of film noir that has carried over significantly into neo noir. From the late sixties onward advanced film technology and rollbacks on censorship, have enabled the neo noir films to be more action-packed, but their plotlines are still driven by the unveiling of their characters’ inner demons and agency.

            Neo noir films are seen by film critics as reflecting many of the characteristics of the traditional film noir, but the changes in society enabled them to explore much broader themes and take much bolder moves for their plots and characters. Neo noir styles provided opportunities for Black directors, writers and actors to raise awareness of their cultural struggles beyond the Blaxploitation movies of the 70s. Manthia Diawara discusses the perspective of chiaroscuro in film noir to show the darkness of characters, and how lighting and effects portray character changes, “us(ing) the tropes of Blackness as metaphors of White characters’ moral transgressions and falls from grace.”  Because there was already a ‘darkness’ in the cramped and underprivileged Black cities, Diawara explains why ‘noir by noirs’ is the perfect genre to explore minority struggles, “In a paradoxical sense, the redeployment of noir style by Black filmmakers redeems Blackness from the genre by recasting the relation between light and dark on the screen as a metaphor for making Black people and their culture visible. In a broader sense, Black film noir shines light (as in daylight) on Black people.”

The darkness of film noir may have evolved into the blackness of neo noir, but how well has the femme fatale evolved? The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines the femme fatale as “an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who is likely to cause distress or disaster to a man who becomes involved with her.” A tidy description, but one that doesn’t explore the depths of either the femme fatale and the subjectivity that she incites or recognize that the distress and disaster often rebounds on her, as well as the man. Film critics, especially feminist theorists, don’t always agree on whether these femme fatales were subjective or objective characters in film noir, but I would argue that the struggles of these earlier women provided a blueprint that the social changes of the sixties enabled the later femme fatales to profit from, and the films benefitted from actresses who had earned their Hollywood kudos.

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The Devil in the Armchair

          In Double Indemnity, Phyllis Dietrichson’s entrance at the top of the stairs signifies all the traits of the film noir femme fatale. Seen from the male viewpoint of Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), Barbara Stanwyck displays the obvious physiological differences between the sexes, wrapped seductively in nothing more than a towel. After dressing, she returns in a white ruffled day dress, as she takes a seat in the prominent armchair. Phyllis’ body is well-lit as Neff studies her legs and anklet, but as is often seen in the film, the shadow falling over Phyllis’ face intermates that she is no angel. Nestled in the chair, her initial body language is withdrawn, Stanwyck’s voice is soft and reserved around her insurance enquiries, but her features portray a range of emotions to the audience, as we see her mind working in overdrive.  Neff feels in control during their sexual banter, but Phyllis is clearly in the driving seat from the beginning.

          In contrast, in Devil in a Blue Dress, we see director Carl Franklin attempt to recreate the first meeting of Phyllis and Neff. The long shot of Daphne as she enters the room, the soft, ruffled dress, although blue, is reminiscent of Phyllis’ attire and her settling into the same style armchair, adjusting her skirt to cover her ankle that Phyllis had no issue sharing. But the sexual chemistry that abounds between Stanwyck and MacMurray is sadly lacking between actors Jennifer Beals and Denzel Washington. So much of what we learn about Phyllis is portrayed in the expressive delivery of lines by Stanwyck, from feigned innocence to vicious murderess, and we are driven through Double Indemnity to distrust her every duplicitous move. Beals gives us none of this moral ambiguity; she’s a beautiful woman, but her deadpan expressions and lack of emotional fortitude don’t engage and barely create the mysterious intrigue that could have driven the role. When Phyllis is confronted and shot by Neff, she takes a stand and accepts her fate proudly, confidant that it was better to have fought and failed than accept her boring existence. As a character, Daphne lacks the hardboiled edge of Phyllis, and so does her muted exit, which is only told to us through Easy’s vaguely disappointed voice over.

          There’s no doubt that Devil in a Blue Dress was a vehicle for Washington, although the artful Don Cheadle certainly steals scenes from Washington, delivering punch lines like, “Well if you didn’t want him dead Easy, why d’you leave him with me?” Daphne however is at best an accidental femme fatale; a popular actress in the nineties, Beals, of African American and Caucasian parents, is objectified as Daphne.  Her short scenes give Franklin an opportunity to provide an insight into the race issues of the time, but Daphne barely passes for a lead role, and Beals does not have the gravitas or the acting chops to deliver a memorable and ‘dark’ character like Stanwyck’s Phyllis.

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The Happy Ending

          A seasoned hoofer from childhood, and a favorite dance partner of Fred Astaire, starring in Gilda put Rita Hayworth in a whole new perspective. Although Hayworth had always been able to move, smile and toss her luxurious, wild mane, the change in Gilda is clarified by Sheila O’Malley, “The musical numbers in Gilda are not a break in the action. They are the action.” Gilda knows exactly the hate/anger/jealousy her actions are causing both men in her life, but she is trapped between them both, belonging to one and longing for the other. Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown has a toughness through maturity, but “Hayworth’s toughness and unforced sexiness” stems from knowing the only weapon she has to fight with is her sexuality, which is electric on display. It’s hard to imagine another actress that could do justice to Gilda, and as O’Malley demonstrates, “When “Put the Blame on Mame” ends, and Hayworth invites the men in the audience to come up onstage and take off her dress, the movie-musical illusion shatters and reality comes barreling in, ruthless and brutal.”

          Gilda is one of the rare ‘redeemed’ femme fatales. Perhaps because it was postwar and she was ‘rescued’ from a bad marriage with a German who ran a Nazi cartel, Gilda was ‘allowed’ by the censors to live and start afresh with the slightly-less-than-wholesome American boy. In many ways this is the traditional happy ending, although O’Malley doubts that, suggesting that rather than “love has triumphed. It’s more like a criminal getaway.”

When Tarantino describes his lead Pam Grier in an interview, he refers to her Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, when he says, “She has just got all this power and strength – and she is Foxy Brown 20 years later – and she has all this womanness.”  As a retro film, using neo noir tropes and dealing with 1990’s empowered women, Tarantino’s description is perfect. Brown/Grier embody all the strength of a more experienced woman in her 40s; she knows she’s still attractive, but it’s her ‘smarts’ and confidence that ooze sexuality rather than her corset – all wrapped up in “womanness!”  Jackie Brown doesn’t need to be redeemed for her happy ending, the now financially-independent Jackie can move on without a man, as Nick Michal describes her last scene, driving away with Jackie looking directly at the camera, “But she’s not looking at it, she’s looking through it, past it, at the future she’s created for herself.”

          Max Cherry’s instant attraction to Jackie Brown on their first meeting as he picks her up from the jail, is rose-tinted as director Tarantino shoots close ups of actor Robert Forster love-at-first sight reaction to Jackie, while the nondiegetic soft soul allows the audience in on his fantasy. Jane Capulti would undoubtably point out Max’s ‘white man’ attraction to the woman of color, her primitive emotions and sexual aggression, but as Capulti warns “white male miscegenators, beware! Exotica and danger go hand in hand.” When Jackie suggests Max joins her on the trip to Spain, he admits that she scares him “un poco” and he enjoys his part in the plan and his unconsummated romance but cannot allow himself the freedom to cut loose the way Jackie does.

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The Femme Protagonist

          Host Steve Inskeep introduces a show about novelist Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe with these words, “…in the minds of many readers, he might still be wandering the streets of Depression-era Los Angeles, solving crimes, and letting off wise cracks like this: I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.” And Mike Shuster continues to describe the LA detective, “Marlowe was cool, smart, world weary, even droll. He dressed in dark gray suits, lived in lonely rooms, worked in empty offices."

In the minds of the viewers of Netflix’s “Jessica Jones” you just need to move the empty office to New York and replace the ‘dark gray suits’ with hobnail boots, jeans, and a leather jacket, and voila! our tough guy ‘Marlowe’ becomes our tough girl ‘Jones.’ Jessica is played with grit by the versatile Krysten Ritter, and as Zoe Williams sums up their character, “She is the female Humphry Bogart.”

          Jessica’s office reflects the Marlowe world of cruddy offices, with the glass door with the agency name often needing replacing/repainting pending on the plot – but always a visual as the characters are brought in or sometimes literally – thrown out. Where this becomes interesting is when we see a total flip of the roles in a film noir; now it is the woman who is the PI, and the man becomes the ‘homme fatale’.  Rather than using the traditional charms of the femme fatale to seduce her protagonist, Kilgrave has the advantage of mind-control and flashbacks reveal that he had exercised his ‘gift’ by keeping Jessica his sex-slave for a year. However, just as the rich man needs to be loved for himself and not his money, Kilgrave (David Tennant) needs Jessica to love him of her own freewill.  

          Film genres come and go cyclically, but a consistent and growing genre over the last 20 years has been the superhero movie. The typical boys’ comic book market of the 1950s exploded to a new audience after the cult success of the graphic novel Watchmen in 1987. Watchmen targeted new adult and marginalized markets including gay and black characters, and the heroes began to struggle with moral ambiguities and dark character flaws. Now owned by Disney, the Marvel Universe of The Avengers and X-men monopolize both the comic book/graphic novel adult market and the movie goer.  But the explosion of streaming services like Netflix, enabled Marvel to expand on lesser-known, comic books characters that inhabited the more extreme sex, drugs and violent worlds like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

The characteristics of neo noir provide the natural medium for Jessica Jones to transfer from graphic novel to screen, in the same way that Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe transferred from pulp fiction to film noir.  As part of the Marvel franchise, the additional superpowers that our protagonists/antagonists are ‘gifted’ with sit comfortably within the traditional traits of film noir; the outsider detective, the use of voice overs to tell backstory and revelations to the audience, use of lighting to portray the grey area between good and bad, are all present. With one original twist – in Jessica Jones, the gender roles have been switched. Jessica is the outsider both because of her powers and her dark past (which is revealed slowly through the episodes) the private investigator, the problem solver, sexually liberated but alone and rejecting help when offered.

          But as Williams goes on to identify, “Yet there is one trope more unusual still: the strong victim… in the case of Jessica Jones she is both victim and hero.” I think it is invaluable to compare the Netflix series with Ida Lupino’s sensitive and moving film Outrage.  Its over seventy years since Outrage sensitively tackled the subject of rape, with Mala Powers’ first leading role as Ann Walton. Ida Lupino was an English-born actor who “gained fame through her portrayals of strong, worldly-wise characters and went on to become one of the first women to direct films in Hollywood.” The film noir traits in Outrage are mirrored in Jessica Jones, with the long shots, close-ups and shaky camera action during the scenes of distress, and during flashbacks to both Jessica and Ann’s rapes.

          After the ‘brutal attack’ Ann runs away from the finger-pointing of her peers. Her violent response to a potential sexual harassment sees her respond with violence in the same PTSD reaction that affects Jessica. With the help of Rev. Bruce Ferguson, Ann recovers and returns to face and rebuild the life that had been scarred by her attack. Censorship, at the time of film noir, not only restricted sexual behavior in films, but it also banned the use of the very word ‘rape’.  Ann’s rape is only ever referred to as a ‘violent attack’ that should never be mentioned. Joyce Carol Oates declares that “Here is a noir film in which the female protagonist emerges as the heroine of her own life – a film so far ahead of its time.” Three years after Outrage, Lupino directed The Hitch-Hiker, which is considered the only film noir directed by a woman.

The female prospective that Lupino brought to her films made her a forerunner for women creators, evolving today into the predominantly female production team of Jessica Jones, led by writer and creative director Melissa Rosenberg. Unlike Ann, Jessica is empowered to voice her attack loud and clear reflecting the current mood of the #MeToo Movement, she shoots down Kilgrave’s twisted defense of their ‘relationship’ as he calls it, when Jessica defines it for what it was - “Yeah. It’s called rape!” 

          Not surprisingly, Jessica Jones passes the Bechdel test with many of the female relationships; Jessica and Trish, Jessica and lawyer Hogarth, Trish and her mother Dorothy Walker, and even when Jessica shares her ‘coping’ mechanisms with Kilgrave’s other victim Hope. Apart from the largely female production team, the casting director supported Ritter with some seasoned, kick-ass femme fatales. Lilly and Lana Wachowski, sisters who write under the production name “The Wachowski Brothers,” wrote and directed Carrie-Anne Moss as the leather-clad sidekick to Keanu Reeves in The Matrix Series; a more mature Moss doesn’t get to be as physical as lesbian lawyer Hogarth, but her character is as hardball as any ‘noir man’ who discusses work not lovers with Jessica.  Mrs. Walker, played by Rebecca De Mornay is as twisted as Trish’s stage-mom, as she was as the young, femme fatale nanny in Hand That Rocks the Cradle. And victim Hope? Actress Erin Moriarty’s next role sees her as ‘Starlight’, the chemically enhanced ‘victim-hero’ in The Boys.

          However, as the victim-hero, Jessica can only be strong because she has the added superhero traits, while the other female characters remain un-empowered victims. Jessica’s best friend, Radio Star, Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) develops from the blond starlet to a fierce fighter with her kick-boxing training, showing that she can both give and take a punch, but her female physiology is still overcome in her first bout with Will Simpson: Jessica’s super-strength must again save her. Only when Trish takes the combat enhancement drugs herself, does she develop super ‘female’ strength and is she able to outfight Simpson, and finally be Jessica’s hero.

          So, will the “neuroanatomical differences” that Oates presents, restrict “female noir” from being fully empowered? Swiss scientist, Lutz Jäncke would argue that “terms such as ‘female brains’ or ‘male brains’, which are frequently used in popular writing, should not be used since it is difficult or even impossible to identify typical and dimorphic features that justify a clear sex/gender classification.” However, Jäncke does agree with Oates that nurture can have a bigger impact that nature, as the differences in how the male vs female brains work can be very subtle and sometimes indistinguishable. So, if our brains are the same, is it simply down to physical strength that will have female protagonists forever dependent on comic-book superhero enhancements to write their own stories? Women have come a long way in the last 80 years of noir since Phyllis first pushed the bar in Double Indemnity; she needed the money for independence and the man to do her dirty work. 50 years later, Jackie Brown got the money and her independence, but discarded the man. Today, Jessica Jones has her independence through strength, doesn’t want the money and is too broken for the man. Tomorrow? Society is changing its perception of ‘male and female’ roles, perhaps the future holds a non-binary noir where equality will be achieved without superhero enhancements.

 

 

Works Cited.

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Bastién, Angelica Jade. “The Nine Lives of the Femme Fatale.”

https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2016/04/03/the-nine-lives-of-the-femme-fatale/

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ida-Lupino

Capulti, Jane and Sagle, Lauri. “Dangerous Women of Color in Popular Film and Television.”

Race, Gender & Class, 2004. p.100.  

Diawara, Manthia. “Noir by Noirs. Towards a New Realism in Black Cinema.”

African American Review 1993. p.526.

Frank, Nino. “A New Kind of Police Drama.” 1946.

Jäncke, Lutz. “Sex/gender differences in cognition, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy.” 2018.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013760/

Kaplan, Ann. “Introduction to 1978. Edition.” Women in Film Noir, edited by Ann Kaplan,

1998, p.16.

Michal, Nick. “Across 110th Street and Film Noir: Jackie Brow and New Noir Potentials.” 2015.

http://www.thefocuspull.com/features/jackie-brown-and-new-noir-potentials/

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Female Noir.” Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women

Writers, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. 2020.

O’Malley, Sheila. “The Long Shadow of Gilda.” 2016.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3878-the-long-shadow-of-gilda

Oxford Languages. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

Shuster, Mike. “Philip Marlowe: Product of a Hard-Boiled Time.”

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90180169

Williams, Zoe. “Jessica Jones: mind control and redemption – the timely return of a feminist

superhero.” 2018.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/feb/24/jessica-jones-mind-control-and-redemption-the-timely-return-of-a-feminist-superhero

The Boys. Created by Eric Kripke, Amazon Studios, 2019-ongoing.

Devil in a Blue Dress. Directed by Carl Franklin, TriStar Pictures, 1995.

Double Indemnity. Directed by Billy Wilder, Paramount Pictures, 1944.

Gilda. Directed by Charles Vidor, Columbia Pictures, 1946.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Curtis Hanson, Hollywood Pictures, 1992.

Jackie Brown. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, Miramax Films, 1997.

Jessica Jones. Created by Melissa Rosenberg, Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2015-2019.

The Matrix. Directed by The Wachowski Brothers, Warner Bros. 1999.

Outrage. Directed by Ida Lupino, The Filmakers, 1950.

The Postman Always Rings Twice. Directed by Tay Garrett, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1946.