Independent Study: Woman in Film Noir

In Film Noir, a strictly aesthetically motivated film genre, extremely false gender roles are apparent and conformed to. From looking at Film Noir, as a modern day contemporary audience member, the way woman are presented is extremely sexist. The roles that women play in film noir are characters restricted by oppression and under the patriarchal expectations of the society they were in. Woman were consistently categorised into three different types. It is said woman in Film Noir were 'persented as prizes, as desirable objects'                                                      

The first type of woman in film noir, a common role that was played; The Femme Fatale, which translates from french as ' the fatal woman'. Femme Fatale's were mysterious, seductive, troublesome woman who lures men in using their sexuality to become infatuated and triggers the characters downfall and causes mass distress. Femme Fatale's object the typical house wife; straying away from being a devoted wife and loving mother.  For them, marriage is dull, conforming and tedious. It is debatable whether Femme Fatale's are independent and how much power they actually hold. This is because yes, they infatuate and lure men in using their passionate ways and sexual attractiveness, although, they commonly have to resort to murder to escape abusive, secluded relationships. An example of this is in the early noir film; I wake up screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone- 1941). Three men sit in a bar evaluating their unsuccessful attempts to seduce the femme fatale, clearly resenting her evident refusal to be possessed. When one man complains that "Women are all alike," another responds simply, "Well, you've got to have them around — they're standard equipment." This shows clearly the twisted views that men had on woman, and how they just bluntly disregarded them as humans, they just saw them as sexual or household objects.

Rita Hayworth as 'Gilda' in Gilda, by Charles Vidor (1946) 
Gilda is a typical example of a femme fatale; the dark,revealing dress and make up is symbolic of her dangerous and powerful ways, a symbol of the danger men will face by succumbing to her passionate charm. The colour black represents power and authority, but at the same time elegance and formality; which summarises a femme fatale exactly. The fact she is well made up as well as having elegant, luxurious clothing and jewellery reinforces the fact she is sexually objectified by men, yet also using her sexual attributes and attraction to infatuate men and 'lure' them in.

The second type of Noir woman is 'The Good Woman'. The good woman embraces her traditional place in the household and conforms to the gender roles of being a good mother and wife in the nuclear family setting. Despite conforming to the patriarchal expectations of woman at the time, The Good Woman is still critically out of place in film noir, she is not a realistic alternative to the Femme Fatale, she is nowhere near a realistic representative of female behaviour. Essentially, the good woman infers that society's prescription for happiness, the traditional family, is uninteresting and unattainable and embedded with oppression and restriction. The world of the Good Woman is highly contrasting in terms of narrative content to the themes and mood of Film Noir; dark, criminal and dishonest. It is said that The Good Woman often lives in a clean, well-kept apartment, away from the gloominess and obscurity of the bleak noir city streets. The Good Woman is often filmed using 'visual techniques of classical Hollywood cinema: high-key lighting, eye-level camera angles, and open spaces — free of the disturbing mise-en-scčne that surrounds the femme fatale'. (1) The Good Woman is consistently tempted by the lifestyle of the sensual femme fatale, she remains passive and nurturing, a safe haven and option for the men trying to resist the temptation of the Femme Fatales.

Jocelyn Brando as Kate Bannion from Fritz Lang's 'The Big Heat' (1953)
Here we can see Kate Bannion as the Good Woman, embracing her role in the home and conforming to  the patriarchal gender roles by cooking and cleaning, evidently keen to please and serve her husband. She is wearing a patterned,modest dress and apron, representative of her role in society and in the film. The control from her husband is blatant, in the way he has a tight grasp on her arm, beckoning her, and she responds and permits this.

The third and final type of woman in film noir, is The Marrying Type. This distinct type of female character started to appear in the late 1940's in Film Noir. Unlike the other two, the Marrying Type was out to completely domesticate the hero, she disregards the often criminal and wrong activities of her husband and aims to ensure he fulfils the role of a typical husband, socially approved and in all honesty; dull, confining and de-humanised. 'The marrying women in these films are not "bad" women like the murderous femmes fatales of earlier noir films — they often represent society's ideal of the perfect wife or sweetheart. But it is precisely this status quo perfection that marks them as dangerous to the hero. Indeed, Deborah Thomas argues that the marrying woman can be just as threatening as the femme fatale: "[T]hough the femme fatale is indeed a threat, she is no more so than the so- called 'redemptive' woman intent on the hero's domestication and the restoration of the status quo." Thomas also points out that the hero's anxiety regarding marriage and family responsibilities often runs so deep that he is not consciously aware of it, while the marrying woman knows that she is the cause of his anxiety' (2) 

Jane Wyatt as Dick Powell's wife, in 'Pitfall' (1948)
In the final cycle of film noir, it is said that the marrying type must be neutralised or destroyed .
Here we can see Wyatt punishing Powell from trying to escape the 'marrying type' of woman.

(1)http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/noir/np05ff.html 
(2) http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/noir/np07marr.html