Portrayal of women in film noir

Women are depicted in film noir crime movies in a range of archetypes and stock characters, including the alluring femme fatale. Film noir directors tried to fulfill specific constructions of gender roles in this aesthetically driven cinema style, creating very specific false archetypes for women within the ongoing history of film noir.[1] According to Andrew Spicer in “Film Noir,” the articulation of the patriarchy in film noir is understood as one of the style's most consistent features, no matter the decade of the film.[2]

Women's roles

The roles that women play in film noir are the stylistic innovations of the heteronormative patriarchy, which are set up to be harmless supplements for the narrative. However, upon further investigation, these roles directly translate to the dark reality of the re-oppressed female post-World War II when women were expected to re-insert themselves back into the home after finding independence through the workforce.[3] The narrative of film noir and the ever-present domestic space during the 1940s and 1950s is an obvious thematic representation of woman as other, in which the “attack on the dominant social values [in film noir is] normally expressed through the representation of the family.”[4]

Sylvia Harvey observes that the absence of the family in film noir indicates that a “woman’s place in the home determines her position in society, but also serves as a reflection of oppressive social relationships.” [5] This control over the domestic space that women carried when they entered the workforce during World War II was quick to be taken away when social order was attempted to restore itself after the war. Within the uneasy aesthetic of this film style, the harsh light and ominous visual cues of danger approaches the domestic space as a highly disturbed and broken social order, displacing viewers into recognizing the tension in the home and the women's role in generating that narrative.[6] In that recognizable visual cue that predetermines the gaze on film noir as male oriented, viewers are aware of the “artificial domestic milieu.”[7]

Women that are represented in film noir are no strangers to the danger that lies beyond the veil of fiction. There is a disruption in the domestic space by the rebelling female moulds of film noir, to which the male protagonists do not take to the success of the over the top narcissist and empowered female character lightly, similar to the reality of the unhappiness of the patriarchal order losing its grip on women.

Patriarchal order

The patriarchal order of film noir escalates to a point that in some films, such as Double Indemnity (1944), the child becomes oppressed. The family home in Double Indemnity “is the place where three people who hate each other spend endlessly boring evenings together. The husband does not merely not notice his wife, he ignores her sexually”.[8] As revenge against his attitude towards her, Phyllis Dietrichson (played by Barbara Stanwyck) plots to murder her dull, oppressive husband with the facilitation of an insurance salesman. The two of them are then forced into an endless cycle of “desire, death, and retribution” as a repercussion of the acts that they have committed.

At an attempt to deceive the woman and restore order, the insurance man (Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray) soon finds out that the femme fatale has beat him at the game of domestic restoration when she attempts to murder him. Once he is killed, Phyllis is led to live in peace as a black widow, a true spider woman, a femme fatale.[9]

In the essay “Hollywood, Freud, and the Representation of Women,” Janet Walker elaborates on the end of World War II and the “conjuncture of social problems, the difficulty of gender roles, and the institutions of American psychoanalysis and psychiatry [which] became an obsession of the media”.[10] Retrospectively, the female role in American cinema and the female role within the domestic space post-World War II were paralleled.[11]

The interest that media and popular culture had with feminine psycho-sexuality is directly revealed in the visual cues and dark, sexual narratives in classic titles of Film Noir, such as Phantom Lady (1944), The Reckless Moment (1949), and The Big Sleep (1946). Claire Johnston, through her studies of Double Indemnity (1944), explains that “the Oedipus complex allows access to desire only through repression: it is through lack that desire is instituted”.[12]

Women in film noir are often faced with the common theme of an embedded Oedipus complex in the narrative, a threat of castration done by the female antagonist to the male protagonist of the film.[13] In films which exhibit the challenge against the patriarchy and an internal struggle with the Oedipus complex, there are examples, such as Mildred Pierce (1945). The film noir narrative is set up to combat a melodramatic aesthetic - the “women’s perspective” of film, as opposed to the typical gaze that is fixated on male desire.[14] Since Mildred Pierce denies the convention of the male narrative and alters the reception of her desired point of view of the story, the home is left to unravel and reveal its state of disarray as a consequence of her absence. While there is an attempt to balance the role of the loving and sensitive mother while acting as the sole income for the home, there is an obvious resentment that her eldest daughter Veda has for Mildred. On the surface, it is understood that the disgust towards her mother is because of the source of her income, through labour, however it is later revealed that her resentment for Mildred, the protagonist, is because the lack of a phallus.

The audience comes to understand this when it is laid out that Mildred's business partner and platonic lover, Monty, is taking advantage of Mildred's funds and supplying Veda with all of her needs, to which Veda obliges happily, opposing her mothers same gestures.[15]

One of the defining characteristics of film noir is the excess of light, shadow, and texture, all at once.[16] The monochrome is reliant on the extreme attempt of shape and contrast in wardrobe. Mildred Pierce relies heavily on visual cues in the attempt to illustrate a straightforward narrative for the audience, which can be seen through the apparel, such as Mildred's dominating shoulder pads and pantsuits as an attempt to combat against the male figure and its default of symbolizing power. Like in any cinema of the early evolution of film, there are specific roles for actors to accommodate in the narrative of the film.

One specific example of a stock female character in film noir is the alluring and treacherous femme fatale and "Spider Woman". The direct translation from French for the term femme fatale is “fatal woman,” which is embedded in classic film noirs, such as Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), and Lara Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). These examples of deadly women commit crimes inside and outside the narrative of the films. As a consistent narrative trait in film noir, there are flashbacks embedded in the storyline, so as to signal towards the presence of a larger story outside of the feature film, an association with reality.

As Karen Hollinger describes in “Film Noir, Voice-Over and the Femme Fatale,” women in film noir are subjected to the psychoanalytic perspective of the male, which forces a consistent attempt to try and interpret the meaning of femaleness, from the point of view of the phallus, which is deemed a problematic perspective, since it speaks for a silenced demographic by popular culture and media.[17] Christine Gledhill explains that there are “five features of film noir,” one of them being an “expressionist visual style and emphasis on sexuality in the photographing of women.” [18]

Through this perspective and the common male voice over that film noir exhibits, it can neutralize the women's gaze and turn the narrative into the desired male fantasy, although the obvious attempt of the female character.[19] Through this gaze of cinema, which is a representation of reality, there is a fabrication that male is the perspective of normativity and female is considered other, as secondary and overlooked.[20] These female actors are then created as a fictional object and then made into objects of spectacle, made for enjoyment and sexual pleasure.[21]

To combat this perspective of the female figure, the femme fatale is both very useful and problematic. The femme fatale is defined by “her dangerous, yet desirable sexual presence,” rather than the typically weak and supplemental female characters that are cast in Hollywood films.[22] In these aesthetically loaded films, the glorification of the woman is translated into holding the “visual power” and the gaze of the audience, at times becoming the dominant character, displacing onlookers of their expectations of a sexualized female character and re-establishing the power of the weak female character that once was. This disorients the image of the erotic woman, even in the face of narrative repression.[23]

Janey Place describes in “Women in Film Noir” that ‘film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art.” [24] The cinematic style of film noir, although problematic, given its glorification of white female golden beauty, gives an active, intelligent symbol of a female character, which is empowering and both relatable for women.[25] Strong female characters in film noir, specifically those of the Femme Fatale breed, manage to displace the viewer into tricking them into adoring the woman for her sexual appeal and reactivity to the mis-en-scene, considering her a prop for the highly aestheticized film style, then later committing crimes that oppose the visage of her characters expectation of being a simplified prop for the male's benefit.

However, this character archetype does not come without a convoluted narrative - One example of a treacherous woman is Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946, she “exhibits a remarkable series of unmotivated character switches and roles.” [26] In her introductory shot she is seen as a sex bomb, a desired sex object through the narrators eyes, yet she juxtaposes this vision as a hard working woman, then a “loving playmate in an adulterous relationship; a fearful girl in need of protection, [a] victim of male power; [a] hard, ruthless murderess; [a] mother-to-be;” then following that she is a sacrifice to the judicial system.[27] This inconsistency can be seen as a parallel to the unsureness of the hero's trajectory, although in the male hero's journey, he at least “maintains a consistency of values” in which Cora does not. In many ways, this problematic narrative confirms stereotypes about white women of the time of that decade, the late 1940s, yet still manages to allow an insertion of feminist ideologies through this character in her feats of violence and revenge.[28]

There is a threat to the male that women are conducting when they are in opposition of the female expectation or standard, which is understood, in a dramatic way, a threat to man's existence.[29]

References

1. Hirsch, Foster. The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. New York, NY: Da Capo, 1983. Print. 147
2. Spicer, Andrew. Film Noir. Harlow, England: Longman, 2002. Print.84
3. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. Print. 129
4. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 36
5. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 36
6. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 42
7. Dixon, Wheeler W. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2009. Print. 38
8. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 42
9. Harvey, Sylvia. Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 43
10. Walker, Janet. Hollywood, Freud and the Representation of Women. Regulation and Contradiction, 1945 early 60s. In Home is where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film. Christine Gledhill, ed. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 197-214.
11. Walker, Janet. Hollywood, Freud and the Representation of Women. Regulation and Contradiction, 1945 early 60s. In Home is where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film. Christine Gledhill, ed. London: British Film Institute, 1987. 197-214.
12. Johnston, Claire. Double Indemnity. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 91
13. Johnston, Claire. Double Indemnity. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 91
14. Gledhill, Christine. Home Is Where the Heart Is : Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film. London: BFI Pub, 1987. Print. 5
15. Cook, Pam. Duplicity in Mildred Pierce. In Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 69
16. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 67
17. Hollinger, Karen. Film Noir, Voice-Over and the Femme Fatale, Dixon, Wheeler W. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2009. Print. 245
18. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 27
19. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 28
20. Hollinger, Karen. Film Noir, Voice-Over and the Femme Fatale, Dixon, Wheeler W. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2009. Print. 254
21. Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989.
22. Hollinger, Karen. Film Noir, Voice-Over and the Femme Fatale, Dixon, Wheeler W. Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2009. Print. 246
23. Place, Janey. Women in Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 47
24. Place, Janey. Women in Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 47
25. Place, Janey. Women in Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 47
26. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 27
27. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 31
28. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 31
29. Place, Janey. Women in Film Noir. Kaplan, E. Ann. Ed. Women in Film Noir. London: BFI, 2012. Print. 47