Film noir contains versions of both extremes of the female archetypes, the deadly seductress and the rejuvenating redeemer. Its special significance lies in the combination of sensuality with activity and ambition which characterises the femme fatale, and in the mode of control that must be exerted to dominate her. She is not often won over and pacified by love for the hero, as is the strong heroine of the 40s who is significantly less sexual than the film noir woman. Indeed, her strength is emphasised by the general passivity and impotence which characterises the film noir male, making her a far greater threat to him than the career woman of the 40s was, and thus only actual or symbolic destruction is an effective control. Even more significant is the form in which the ‘spider woman’s’ strength and power is expressed: the visual style gives her such freedom of movement and dominance that it is her strength and sensual visual texture that is inevitably printed in our memory, not her ultimate destruction.

he tendency of popular culture to create narratives in which male fears are concretised in sexually aggressive women who must be destroyed is not specific to the 40s to mid-50s in the United States, but is seen today to a degree that might help to account for the sudden popularity of these films on college campuses, on television, and in film retrospectives. But despite their regressive ideological function on a strictly narrative level, a fuller explanation for the current surge of interest in film noir must acknowledge its uniquely sensual visual style which often overwhelms (or at least acts upon) the narrative so compellingly that it stands as the only period in American film in which women are deadly but sexy, exciting and strong.