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If film noir could have manufactured an archetype, it would most definitely have been Marie. With Ms. Windsor's bedroom eyes ('they didn't fit for a 'goody-goody wife, or a nice little girlfriend') she smoldered on screens, in scenes with John Garfield and many others, in some of her best work.
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What is 'Femmes noirs'?
What is 'femme fatale' in film noir?
What are the archetypes of female roles in film noir?
Who were the most famous women fatales in classical film noir?
The portrayal of women in film noir, and more specifically the term “femme fatale”, has been a topic of intrigue and fascination for decades. The subgenre of film has captivated audiences with its dark and enigmatic depiction of women, often casting them as seductive, cunning, and morally ambiguous characters.
- Brigid O’Shaughnessy
- Norma Desmond
- Alice Reed
- Laura Hunt
- Kathy Moffat
- Vera
- Elsa Bannister
- Phyllis Dietrichson
- Annie Laurie Starr
- Jane Palmer
“You’re good. You’re very good,” remarks cynical private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) to the whimpering Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) in John Huston’s classic 1941 film noir, The Maltese Falcon. Spade has seen throughO’Shaughnessy, of course – he knows her tears are all performance, a melodramatic con. Not that you can blame O’Shaughnessy; t...
Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond is the ostensible femme fatale of Sunset Boulevard, but, as is fitting for a film that dispenses with many of the conventions of film noir’s classic era, that’s not quite the case. In truth, it might make more sense to call Joe Gillis (William Holden), the man whom Desmond attempts to entrap, the film’s homme fatale. ...
In the spirit of true noir romance, the slaughter inThe Woman in the Window begins with a wink and a smile. Entranced by a life-like painting of a beautiful woman in a storefront window, Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) is shocked when its subject, the lustrous Alice Reed (Joan Bennett), emerges from the shadows and strikes up a conver...
Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) is at first a pure apparition in 1944’s Laura,a presumed murder victim whose memory haunts the men who loved her, fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), aging libertine Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), and even one who never met her at all—the gruff detective investigating her death, Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews). Laura is...
Out of the Past, like The Maltese Falcon, has one of those noir plots that you’d need a flow-chart to make sense of. Loyalties are ever-shifting, schemes are elaborate to the point of impenetrability, and conversations move at such break-neck speed that the patoisalmost becomes a different language: curt, clever, and nearly unintelligible. Screenpl...
Detour, probably the bleakest of all film noirs, is the story of Al Roberts (Tom Neal) a down-on-his-luck piano player who decides to hitchhike cross-country to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend. Along the way, fate deals poor Al a series of truly awful hands, not the least of which is running across Vera (Ann Savage), a brash and vindictive woman w...
Film noir is full of unsuspecting characters pulled into dangerous worlds they don’t understand, and Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles) might just be the genre’s ultimate patsy. He’s no fool. He knows that Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane), the famed attorney who’s offered him a job aboard his personal yacht is as crooked as they come. His instincts tel...
Double Indemnity is the greatest of all film noirs, and the reason for that rests largely on the shoulders of Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson, who is, if not the greatest femme fatale in the genre, at least the most recognizable. Stanwyck is ice-cold as the soon-to-be-widowed Dietrichson for her murder comes as easy as seduction, and is just...
“We go together. I don’t know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together,” laments Bart Tare (John Dall) to his trigger-happy sweetheart, Annie (Peggy Cummins) in 1950’s Gun Crazy. Not exactly the most eloquent simile ever spoken, but then you can’t really blame poor Bart for thinking of anything else. His brief love affair with Annie consists...
Actress Lizabeth Scott’s husky voice and penetrating stare lend a truly frightening aura to her role as Jane Palmer, a manipulative housewife with a taste for the finer things, and a willingness to step on anyone’s neck to get them. The plot of Too Late for Tears is dark serendipity. Doom masquerading as luck. On a lonely mountain road, Jane and he...
- Walter Jones
- Senior Editor
- Amy Dunne - 'Gone Girl' (2014) Is Gone Girl a noir? Not quite. It's a psychological thriller with noir undertones. However, Amy Dunne, superbly played by Rosamund Pike, is an unforgettable femme fatale.
- Phyllis Dietrichson - 'Double Indemnity' (1944) Arguably cinema's most famous and recognizable femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is also one of the medium's most celebrated villains.
- Catherine Tramell - 'Basic Instinct' (1992) Film noir evolved into the so-called neo-noir revival of post-70s cinema. The late 80s and 90s provided some of the best examples of neo-noir, with Paul Verhoeven's 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct acting as one of the best and most widely-known examples.
- Jane Palmer - 'Too Late for Tears' (1949) Too Late for Tears stars Lizabeth Scott as one of cinema's ultimate femme fatales, the (almost) infallible Jane Palmer.
Jul 30, 2024 · Though many of the dangerous women of classic noir are deadly, others are just alluring, and men’s collective anxiety about female sexuality fills in the blanks. In The Woman in the Window ...
Feb 22, 2021 · The archetype of female roles in film noir can be divided into three categories: the girl-next-door, the femme fatale and the good-bad girl. The girl-next-door is characterised as being ordinary, approachable and innocent. She is honest and pure, and known to be naturally sweet.
Jul 17, 2014 · Tales of broken heroes held hostage by sexually empowered women took readers and viewers by storm. Few of these films are as overtly about the fear of strong women as “Gilda.”
