Rather than a coherent realisation of the unstable, treacherous woman, we tend to find in film noir a series of partial characterisations juxtaposed, not necessarily in continuity but separated by gaps in time (see Out of the Past) and often in blunt contradiction with each other. So, for instance, in The Postman Always Rings Twice Cora exhibits a remarkable series of unmotivated character switches and roles something as follows: (1) sex-bomb; (2) hardworking, ambitious woman; (3) loving playmate in an adulterous relationship; (4) fearful girl in need of protection; (5) victim of male power; (6) hard, ruthless murderess; (7) mother-to-be; (8) sacrifice to law. Such a mode of characterisation, needless to say, is in marked contrast to the consistent moral trajectory of the male, who, although he may be confused or uncertain as to the relation of appearances and reality, at least maintains a consistency of values.

The ultimate ideological effect of this unstable and fractured characterisation of women depends on the organisation of each particular film. As an aspect of the genre’s theatricality such characterisations contribute to the instability and uncertainty of the hero’s world, to the ever-deceiving flux of appearance and reality. In this sense they express a male existential anguish at the failure of masculine desire. But in the course of this, noir female characterisations, while they super- ficially confirm popular stereotypes about women, in their stylisation and play with the surfaces of the cinematic image they arguably foreground some of the features of that image. This is not to claim the progressiveness of the cycle but merely to assert its ideological interest for feminists.