Any claims for film noir’s special significance in portraying fear of women (which is both ancient and newly potent, today and during the period which produced film noir) must account for the particularly valid ties between film noir and the cultural obsessions of the United States during the 40s and early 50s. Film noir has been considered a genre, but it has more in common with previous film movements (e.g., German Expressionism, Soviet Socialist Realism, Italian neo-realism) and, in fact, touches every genre. For a consideration of women in film noir, this is more than a semantic dispute. Film movements occur in specific historical periods — at times of national stress and focus of energy. They express a consistency of both thematic and formal elements which makes them particularly ex- pressive of those times, and are uniquely able to express the homogeneous hopes (Soviet Socialist Realism and Italian Neo-Realism) and fears (German Expressionism and film noir) brought to the fore by, for example, the upheaval of war.

The attitudes towards women evidenced in film noir — i.e., fear of loss of stability, identity and security — are reflective of the dominant feelings of the time.

Genres, on the other hand, exist through time [...]