Film Noir's Femme Fatale - Book Report/Review Example

From Dressed Up to Sexed Up Representing Film Noir's Femme Fatale from the 1940's to Today The image of the femme fatale has been one of the most enduring features of Hollywood films from the earliest silent features to movies being released today. This analysis will explore the notion of whether the femme fatale is essentially a male creation designed for a predominantly male audience. The question which arises is whether this has always been the case or whether it is rather a modern phenomenon. The femme fatale has become an increasingly fetishized and sexually rapacious figure over the history of film, and this process will be explored by considering two films in detail, Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944) and Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992). A brief discussion of the femme fatale through history will provide a useful historical background upon which the two films can be cast. The phrase literally means "deadly woman" or "fatal woman" in English, and throughout history she has been portrayed as sexually insatiable and dangerous. Early examples are the Sumerian goddess Ishtar and the Bible's Delilah. (Dijkstra, 1988) In the Twentieth century, Mata Hari :- exotic dancer, irresistible seducer of men and executed spy - sums up the dangerous combination of sexual magnetism and amorality that is meant to typify the figure. As Dijkstra (1988) has suggested, the cultural clich of the female as dangerous siren was developed by the early 1900's and has continued until the present day. It may be more hidden today, but it still exists. (Copjec, 1993) Movies are not created in a vacuum; they are developed, produced and eventually released within a particular economic, cultural and political milieu that changes with time. A comparison of two films made in 1944 and 1992 must take into account the radically different landscapes in which they were created in order to understand how their femme fatales were portrayed. In 1942 the so-called "Code" enforced by the Hayes Code was in force in American films. This listed certain ideas, lines, themes, subject-matter and even types of clothing which could not appear in films without incurring the wrath of the censors. The film industry more or less accepted the strictures of the Code until the late 1960's. The influence of censorship on 1942's Double Indemnity is illustrated by the fact that an alternative ending, in which the murderers go to the gas chamber, was shot, but never shown. The actual ending is much milder, even though the criminal does get his just deserts. The femme fatale in this film is named Phyllis Dietrichson, and was played in a an Oscar-winning performance by Barbara Stanwyck. The plot creates a classic femme fatale scenario. Dietrichson is unhappily married, seduces another man, Walter Neff, and persuades him to kill her husband in order to receive the "double indemnity" insurance payment of the film's title. The whole story is told from the point of view of the now convicted criminal who has committed the murder. Thus the film's happenings are seen through the eyes of a "man" who has been persuaded into the act of murder by a "woman". This is thus a clear example of a kind of male gaze. The male gaze is a complex idea that essentially argues that women are often created in the eyes of men within the mass media in general, and within movies in particular. At the time Double Indemnity was made everyone involved in the film industry was men (except of course for actresses) so the creation of a film, whether one takes the auteur theory of a single man's vision or the group creation theory, is essentially a male process. As one scholar puts it, "when you look at an object, you are seeing more than the thing itself: you are seeing the relation between the ting and yourself." (it.stlawu, 2006) In one of the more famous sections of the film, the narrator describes meeting his femme fatale for the first time, and appeals to what seems to be a totally male audience for their sympathy towards what subsequently occurred: WALTER: It was a hot afternoon, and I can still remember the smell ofhoneysuckle all along that street. How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle Maybe you would have knownKeyes the moment she mentioned the accident insurance, but I didn't. I felt like a million. (Chandler, Wilder, 1942) (my emphasis) The line about murder and honeysuckle crystallizes the sense of hopeless, almost tragic inevitability of the man who falls for the femme fatale. She is impossible to resist, and so all the guilt for the man's subsequent actions seems to fall onto her. She not only provokes the murder, she acts as something of a puppet-master for the unfortunate man who is taken up by the whirlwind of her sexuality. The narrator represents all men who see women like this, and the gaze presented represents their relationship with such women. This hopelessness is linked to the overall themes of film noir as a genre. The films tend to be, as their name suggests, "black" in nature: the characters are often brutal, psychopathic and utterly amoral. They are thus distinguished from the immoral characters of many more traditional dramas, who are aware of morality and choose to break it; film noir characters seem to inhabit a world in which morality does not exist. Their only sadness is in getting caught after the crime rather than the immoral nature of the crime itself. The characters of film noir are trapped by their own limitations. Thus in Double Indemnity many scenes occur in which Venetian blinds cast shadows on characters' faces to make them look covered in bars, as if in a jail. The odd perspectives, sharp divisions between light and dark, make for the generally foreboding nature of the film. 'Foreboding' is perhaps the best adjective to apply to the whole of film noir. The characters are doomed to a terrible fate because of this entrapment, and the ultimate example of this entrapment is the femme fatale who lures the man into the situation in the first place. (Kaplan, 1978) The relationship between the man and the woman is graphically illustrated by one of the movie posters for the film: The man (who oddly looks more like Jimmy Stewart than Fred MacMurray) is, at least superficially, in the traditional dominant male position of holding the gun. But the woman has him in what appears to be an unbreakable embrace. Python-like, she has wrapped up her man and is just about to kiss him with a mixed smile/leer on her face. He has the gun, but it is held loosely (perhaps even impotently) in his hand. What he will do with it is surely up to the women. The fact that Double Indemnity was roundly criticized by the Hay's Commission (self-appointed enforcers of the Code) as "a blueprint for the perfect murder", and yet went on to receive seven Oscar nominations illustrates that while it did have some power, artistic qualities would often win out in the end. By the time of Basic instinct the Code and most restrictions on movies content were gone. Basic Instinct fits into the basic femme fatale mode in some ways, but a far more explicit sexual component is introduced. It must be noted that director Paul Verhoeven's films are known for their graphic sexuality, so this film cannot necessarily be used as an example of an overall sexualizing of the femme fatale. The sex may reflect the director more than the genre of film noir in general and the figure of the femme fatale in particular. A comparison of the movie posters for each of the films is informative. The illustration below was the one used for Basic Instinct: As in Double Indemnity, the lovers are in an embrace, but this time the passage of the decades has produced a different formulation. Michael Douglas is apparently shirtless, if not entirely naked, and the Sharon Stone figure has a barely perceptible shirt strap. The embrace she has him in is similarly predatory to that of Double Indemnity, but this time more explicitly violent. Her hand appears to be some kind of a claw, the finger-nails biting into the man's back. Also, and perhaps most importantly, she is staring straight at the camera, as if challenging the viewer. The question raised by this poster is whether it is aimed at men, women or both. The challenge presented by the woman's figure suggests that it is mainly aimed at men: Sharon Stone is being portrayed as something of a dangerous, but terribly sexy, animal that must be tamed. Here is the animalistic side of the femme fatale taken to an extreme. The very title, Basic Instinct, shows that the film will be more explicit in a number of ways. The "basic instinct" of all animals is to survive, whether by killing others (to protect) or by reproduction (thus ensuing the wider survival of the species). Both of the drive towards violence and the drive towards sex will be amply evident in the course of the film. Catherine Tramell (played by Sharon Stone) is a contrasting kind of femme fatale to earlier examples. First, she is a 'liberated woman' who is successful in her own world by her own abilities. Thus she is a Ph.D. psychologist who has turned herself into a millionaire author. She is not merely an appendage to her husband who seeks to leave a boring marriage: she is an independent woman with a career, and a mind (and a body) of her own. The explicitly sexual content of the film is introduced by the fact that the man, Johnny Boz, who's murder is being investigated by Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) has been killed after a night of wild sex. Thus sex and violence are explicitly linked. In earlier film noir, as exemplified by Double Indemnity, sex and violence were brought together, but in an implied rather than an overt manner. With the Code gone, a far more permissive society and a director/writer who were known for their explicit subject matter, the femme fatale is more literally a 'sexual killer' - through the fact that she kills through using her sexual appeal. (Williams, 2005) The range of sexuality portrayed in film has now opened up considerably. Thus Tramell is openly, even proudly bisexual in the film. This is an fascinating, and logical progression from earlier femme fatales. In their aggression, assertiveness, and search for power, femme fatales have essentially commandeered many of the character traits that are traditionally preserved for men in the popular imagination. This assertive, domineering sexuality is also the opposite of the supposedly diminutive, passive sexual presence that is the 'feminine ideal' within that same paradigm. Thus it is logical for these women to take on a 'male' role through sleeping with women. As Kaplan (1978) suggests, there is a relationship between the Lesbian Femme and the Femme Fatale: they are perhaps different sides of the same coin. Rapacious and open sexuality is perhaps most famously exhibited in Basic Instinct in two now much-discussed scenes. In the first, while she is being interrogated by a whole panel of police officers, Sharon Stone uncrosses and then re-crosses her legs on the other side. A brief (but clear) image of her genitalia is thus revealed. Sharon Stone has stated that she had no idea that the camera angle would thus expose her, and claims to have slapped Verhoeven and asked him to remove the image from the film. Verhoeven claims that she knew very well what the shot was showing (a perhaps more likely scenario for anyone with a basic knowledge of how films are shot) and does not remember that he was ever slapped. This is an interesting argument, for it reveals the conflict between the 'male gaze' of the camera (controlled by a male director) and the object of that gaze: the female body. Stone is essentially arguing that Verhoeven was a voyeur, which is a somewhat odd argument considering the fact that his voyeurism, if it exists, is intended for the whole male workd, not just himself. One element of the voyeur is that his watching is secret, which is harly the case on a movie set. For the purposes of this study, the scene also plays into a classic femme fatale characterization, with a fetishistic element added. Consider three shots, first a lesbian kiss, then from early in the interrogation scene, and then the most famous shot: The "up the dress" shot is perhaps the most literal example of the male gaze that one might find (outside of pornography). The middle picture shows how Stone fits in with the traditional view of the femme fatale, as the super-confident, cigarette smoking siren who will lead men literally to their ruin. The other two shots show that the explicit nature of modern films, in which sex can (and is) shown rather than being somewhat diminishes the 'mysterious' element of the femme fatale. In Double Indemnity and other films her sexual allure is somewhat mysterious, literally and metaphorically hidden from full disclosure. In Basic Instinct her sexual allure is explicitly shown, and is thus somehow normalized. If the group of police officers that are interviewing stone are representatives for the whole male audience that the film in general, and this scene in particular, is aimed at, then they are firmly in the control of the femme fatale despite her apparently subservient role as a suspect. Here, as Krutnik (1991) suggests of all film noir films, the men are apparently in control, but are actually powerless. Basic Instinct is often called an "erotic film": is the femme fatale now a more overtly erotic figure than she was in the past While an exact definition of the "erotic" has yet to adequately produced, it may perhaps be approached by saying what it is not. (Spicer, 2002) Hard core pornography clearly is not erotic: it merely shows biological functions within the context of an often self-consciously bad story-line and even worse acting skills. The 'gaze' in this case looks at the sex, then turns to the audience and winks. The erotic is more suggestive of sexuality: it may include explicit sex (as occurs in Basic Instinct), but it is shot in a manner that enables the audience to make something more of it than the mere mechanics of sexual coupling. Thus when Stone uncrosses and recrosses her legs there is an eroticism in the very briefness of the glimpse that the audience gets of her sexual organs. If actual sex is shown it is portrayed in a surrealistic manner that seems to relate more to the director's imagination than to any real-life sexual intercourse. Thus when Stone and Douglas have sex in the film, the original "scene would have been even longer and more explicit than the version finally shot and included in the movie . . . the stars and director thought the sexual acrobatics were too long and extreme to be believed and the scene was scaled back in the existing version." (wiki, 2006) The sexual content involving a femme fatale needs to be scaled back to make it seem believable in the modern version of the figure. The genre has indeed come a long way from the days when all had to be suggested and/or implied rather than shown. In some ways it might be argued that the figure of the femme fatale was easier to draw in Wilder's time than today. A femme fatale who reveals her genitalia to policemen is hardly very mysterious, and the need to give her a life outside of men (ie. a job, education, success) dilutes the one-dimensional power of the sexy siren that existed in 1942. The issue of whether the more complex and rounded vision of the femme fatale that is exhibited in Basic Instinct can be fitted within a feminist critique of film is of central importance to the fetishization question. The femme fatale does possess power, but it is a power that many feminist scholars would not want her to have because of the innate suspicion of sexual power (whether male or female) that the discourse illustrates. (Jayamanne, 1995) The question that needs to be answered is whether a woman using her sexual attractions within a male world can be seen to be truly empowered. Is she using the male gaze to turn men upon themselves Or is she merely playing by the rules of men, and only appearing to be empowered when in fact she is caught indelibly within the defining lense of maleness The answer to this is not easy to come by, as illustrated by the wide variety of views upon Basic Instinct. Lesbian/feminist writer Camille Pagilia, who has often criticized films for their clichd view of women, calls the movie "my favorite film" and even provides a wry, often playful audio commentary on the DVD. (Pagilia, 2004) The femme fatale is one of the most enduring figures in many different kinds of art. From literature to painting to film she appears with unerring consistency, and cuts a deadly swathe through any man or group of men who happen to be unlucky enough to pass her way. Since the early days of film, the femme fatale has appeared in different guises. It seems obvious that the figure has become increasingly sexualized in a more explicit manner as films in general have become more open and explicit. The comedic side of the femme fatale has often appeared in recent films. The interrogation scene has been parodied on The Simpsons (series 2) and a kind of subtle comment on the whole figure appears in films such as Pulp Fiction. In that film the half-bright hit-man played by John Travolta has to go on a "date" with his boss's wife, only to be tempted into having sex with her. In one hilarious moment he discusses the moral quagmire that he is facing in the bathroom, while the wife has overdosed on the lounge floor. The femme fatale may not even be a woman anymore, as is shown in The Crying Game, in which a highly realistic transvestite tempts an IRA terrorist into abandoning his comrades. It is the image of the woman that keeps the terrorist in 'grasp', even when the reality of the gender has been graphically revealed to him. However, one factor remains the same: the essential mystery that sexual power and obsession exhibits. Modern scholarship often seems to reflect (unintentionally perhaps) the criticism of those on the Right who would seek to censor films: it criticizes the movie industry because it portrays the world as it is rather than how the scholars would want it to be. Perhaps it is morally repugnant for men to view women as sexual objects, and for women to use this viewpoint for their own ends. Perhaps not. It is, however, an often accurate view of the world. The figure of the femme fatale is ethically neutral on the subject: from Double Indemnity to Basic Instinct and beyond, she uses her sexuality for ill in an often uncomfortable, but always fascinating dance of power. (Wager, 2005) ___________________________________________ Works Cited Borde, R. A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941 - 1953) City Lights, San Francisco: 2002 Chandler, Raymond; Wilder, Billy. Double Indemnity (screenplay). 1942. Chopra-Grant, M. Hollywood Genres and Post-War America: Masculinity, Family and Nation in Popular Movies and Fiom Noir. Tauris, New York: 2006. Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture. Oxford University Press, London: 1988. -------------------. Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth Century Culture. Owl Publishing, New York: 1998. Basic Instinct, movie, dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1992. Conard, Marc. The Philosophy of Film Noir. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington: 2005. Copjec, J. Shades of Noir, Verso, London: 1993. Curran, A. The Philosophy of Film: Introductory text and Readings. Blackwell, New York: 2005. Double Indemnity , movie, dir. Billy Wilder, 1944 Hirsch, F. The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. De Capo, New York: 2001. ---------. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. Limelight, New York: 2004. Groenig, M. The Simpsons, series 2, episode 12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Instinct http://it/stlawu.edu/-global/glossary/gze1.html Jayamanne, L. (ed). Kiss Me deadly: Feminism and Cineam For The Moment. Power Publications, Sidney, 1995. Kaplan, EA (ed.). Women in Film Noir. British Film Institute, London: 1978. Krutnik, F. In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre Masculinity. Routledge, London: 1991. Pagilia, C. Audio Commentary to Basic Instinct, 2004. Pulp Fiction, dir. Quentin Tarantino, 1993. Silver, A. Film Noir Reader. Limelight, New York: 2004. ---------. Film Noir Reader 3. Limelight, New York: 2004. Spicer, A. Film Noir. Pearson Educational, Essex: 2002. The Crying Game, dir. Neil Jordan. 1992. Wager, J. Dames in the Driver's Seat: rereading Film Noir. University of Texas Press, Austin: 2005. Williams, LR. The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema. Indiana University Press, New York: 2005. Read More