Women in Film Noir Films of the 1930s-1950s

WOMEN IN FILM NOIR

In film noir , women were frequently portrayed as opposite ends of a spectrum of acceptable behavior . At one end was the conventional supportive helpmate , a nurturer with good intent but little personality or visual appeal , reflecting gender conventions for mid-twentieth century America . The other , vastly more interesting extreme was the dark lady ' archetype , a mysterious , sexually alluring , complex character who provided the motive force behind the male protagonist 's undoing and was somewhat tantalizing for moviegoers of the era

Influenced by detective fiction , German Expressionism , and urban

br anxiety , film noir dealt primarily with human taboos and transgressions giving audiences a glimpse of human nature 's dark side . Such films often showed characters drawn into crime or misdeeds against their will and ultimately punished for them . Film noir focused on male protagonists , but women were always key elements of the stories , usually as one of two character types - the good woman ' and the femme fatale ' who occupied opposite ends of the moral scale . Often , they reflected social expectations of women as dependent wives and dutiful helpmates , or good ' women . However , noir filmmakers presented this conventional , widely accepted archetype in a somewhat uninteresting manner , both visually and in terms of narrative . Film scholar Janey Place says that , like the normal ' world which rarely appears in film noir , the `good ' but boring women who contrast with the exciting , sexy femmes fatales . [seem] so dull and constricting that [they offer] no compelling alternative to the dangerous but exciting life on the fringe (Place 50

Much more appealing and interesting in all senses was the femme fatale or what Place calls the dark lady ' or spider woman ' characterized by an open , aggressive sexuality that transgressed accepted gender norms of the time . Often , such a character in noir films provided the driving force behind the story , often leading not only to the male protagonist 's ultimate ruin but often to her own . As Place comments , The dark woman of film noir had something her innocent sister lacked : access to her own sexuality (and thus to men 's ) and the power that this access unlocked (Place 36 . Also , as a sexually forward woman in an era before women 's sexuality (or , for that matter , independence ) was widely accepted , dark ladies and spider women were taboo - forbidden in real life and seen only under certain conditions in mainstream films . Such women could not be heroines or freely practice their sexuality without consequences Film scholar Mary Ann Doane writes that the femme fatale in film noir is characterized as unknowable (and this is the lure of her attraction . [but] the message is quite clear - unrestrained female sexuality constitutes a danger (Doane 102-103

Film noir evolved from the early 1940s to the late 1950s as the genre itself evolved , turning more into a wide umbrella than a narrow style As Place observes , film genres express a wide and changing range of ideologies . [and thus] the characteristics of film noir style are not `rules ' to be enforced...