Two aspects of the portrayal of women in film noir are remarkable. First, the particular mix and versions of the more general archetypes that recur in films noirs; and second the style of that expression. Visually, film noir is fluid, sensual, extraordinarily expressive, making the sexually expressive woman, which is its dominant image of woman, extremely powerful. It is not their inevitable demise we remember but rather their strong, dangerous and, above all, exciting sexuality. In film noir we observe both the social action of myth which damns the sexual woman and all who become enmeshed by her, and a particularly potent stylistic presentation of the sexual strength of woman which man fears. This operation of myth is so highly stylised and conventionalised that the final ‘lesson’ of the myth often fades into the background and we retain the image of the erotic, strong, unrepressed (if destructive) woman. The style of these films thus overwhelms their conventional narrative content, or interacts with it to produce a remarkably potent image of woman.

This expression of the myth of man’s ‘right’ or need to control women sexually is in contrast to the dominant version of it in ‘A’ films of the 30s, 40s and 50s, which held that women are so weak and incapable that they need men’s ‘protection’ to survive. In these films, it is the woman who is portrayed benefiting from her dependence on men; in film noir, it is clear that men need to control women’s sexuality in order not to be destroyed by it. The dark woman of film noir had something her innocent sister lacked: access to her own sexuality (and thus to men’s) and the power that this access unlocked.

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 [...]

Often the original transgression of the dangerous lady of film noir (unlike the vamp seductress of the 20s) is ambition expressed metaphorically in her freedom of movement and visual dominance. This ambition is inappropriate to her status as a woman, and must be confined. She wants to be the owner of her own nightclub, not the owner’s wife (Night and the City). She wants to be a star, not a recluse (Sunset Boulevard). She wants her husband’s insurance money, not her comfortable, middle-class life (Double Indemnity). She wants the ‘great whatsit’, and ends up destroying the world (Kiss Me Deadly). She wants independence, and sets off a chain of murders (Laura). She wants to win an uninterested lover, and ends up killing him, herself, and two other people (Angel Face). She wants money, and succeds only in destroying herself and the man who loves her (Gun Crazy, The Killers). She wants freedom from an oppressive relationship, and initiates events that lead to murder (The Big Combo, The Postman Always Rings Twice). Whether evil (Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy, Kiss Me Deadly, Night and the City, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice), or innocent (Laura, The Big Combo), her desire for freedom, wealth or independence ignites the forces which threaten the hero.

Another possible meaning of the many mirror shots in film noir is to indicate women’s duplicitous nature. They are visually split, thus not to be trusted. Further, this motif contributes to the murky confusion of film noir: nothing and no one is what it seems. Compositions in which reflections are stronger than the actual woman, or in which mirror images are seen in odd, uncomfortable angles, help to create the mood of threat and fear.

The redemptive woman often represents or is part of a primal connection with nature and/or with the past, which are safe, static states rather than active, exciting ones, but she can sometimes offer the only transcendence possible in film noir. They Live By Night and On Dangerous Ground (both directed by Nicholas Ray, 1949 and 1951) are characterised by the darkly romantic element that can exist with the cynical. In the former, the young lovers are doomed, but the possibility of their love transcends and redeems them both, and its failure criticises the urbanised world that will not let them live. Their happiest moments are outdoors in the sunlight, with ‘normalcy’ an ideal they can never realise because there is no place for them in the corrupt world. Mary (On Dangerous Ground) is not only cut off from the corruption of greed, money and power of the urban environment by living in a rural setting, she is further isolated (and purified) by her blindness. She teaches the badly disturbed and violent Jim to feel, and her reliance on him releases him from his emotional prison. Both characters are crippled — he emotion- ally and she physically — and need each other to achieve the wholeness of health. This interdependence keeps both characters and their relationship exciting, while other ‘innocents’ of film noir who exist only to contrast with the dangerous woman simply fade into forgetfulness.

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.