here is no room here to go over the theoretical debate between the ‘textual spectator’ and actual spectators, though it is an important one in relation to feminist writing on ‘film noir’ but I have to admit a tendency towards sympathy with the latter. At the same time, I entirely recognise that without the kind of work conducted by Helen Taylor on Gone With the Wind (Scarlett’s Women, 1989) and Jackie Stacey on female audience responses to Hollywood stars in the 40s and 50s (Star Gazing, 1994), one cannot do more than imagine what the responses to 40s pulp fiction films were. However, what I want to do now is look briefly at two films — Laura and Gilda — in the context of women’s centrality behind and in front of the camera, while bearing in mind the following kind of comment (about Gone With the Wind) from Pat West, a trainee nurse ‘trying to impress both sides of the family by following in the two most admired aunts’ footsteps’:

I saw Scarlett O'Hara enter that barn, take one look at the wounded men — and walk out! That was a real turning point in my life. I realised in an instant that you could walk away from illness and from what everyone expected of you. (Taylor, 1989: 38)

There had to be something in these films noirs for female spectators — whether it was the treat of seeing women giving as good, if not better, than they got; the idea that men and women can be equally evil or equally innocent; confirmation of the existence of masculine perversity; or, simply, the refreshingly life-size image of male fallibility.