Femme fatale

convinced by narcissistic, money hungry, manipulating women who have premeditated the murders of their spouses. Even though both men are in different professions, Walter is an insurance man and Ned is a lawyer, they prove to be valuable assets to the femme fatales of the film’s, Phyllis and Matty. In the same way that Walter risks his freedom and friendships for a corrupted love, Ned’s world is flipped upside down as he finds out that Matty is not who she claims to be. Along with many…

the film places her under the femme fatale category. Doll and Faller explain that “Rachel’s clothing identifies her with the spider women of film noir who attempt to destroy the hero.” (p. 93) The fact that she wears her hair up, and is often wearing jackets with padded shoulders, makes her suitable for the spider women role. However, this changes as the film progresses. Rachel suffers a physical and emotional transformation. Suddenly, she transitions “from a femme fatale, a Fallen Woman, into a…

bottom of his partner’s murder. Spade later struggles with the decision of wether he should report the film’s Femme Fatal, whom he loves, to the police. Being one of the first Noir movies, it is evident that the style was not yet fully developed. Though many signature features of Noir film are present: a detective, fast dialogues and ambiguously malign characters, including a Femme Fatale, in my opinion, the aesthetics are not as characteristic as in later Noir films. For example, the play…

Though gay rights have only recently been legally approved nation-wide, discussions on gender awareness, definitions, and queerness are not new. Whether these topics have been around for thousands of years or just in the last hundred, they have been sighted in many ways over time. One such way is in pop culture: the accumulation of materialistic things, such as fashion, songs, and objects, and the non-materialistic things, such as ideas, beliefs, and values, of a population. Society and pop…

know the fact that she shots Whit and ran away, they cannot associates this woman with cold, bloody crime. Like Helen Grayle from Murder, My Sweet, she bleaches her hair from red to blond. The idea of pretending is one of the characteristics of femme fatale. She says she is taller than Napoleon, when Jeff says she is such a small woman. Compare to what Eunice, the woman at the Harlem bar, says, Eunice says she weights exactly like Kathie’s suitcase, Kathie does not like being looked down at.…

Back in Lesson Two, we discussed how film noir evolved from the Romance genre, and focused on obsessive love and femme fatales. The term “film noir”, however, is considered a cinematic term to encompass a whole genre of Hollywood crime dramas. There has been debate over the years about whether film noir is it’s own genre, or whether it’s simply a “style” of film, but I personally prefer to think of it as it’s own genre. The main reason for this is that there are so many different types of…

neglected wife in a plot with passion, adultery and murder. With powerful performances by both actors, Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff, the tall, handsome insurance salesman who is enamored by Barbara Stanwyck, whose portrayal is one of the greatest femme fatales of all time, cold and calculating Phyllis Dietrichson. Along with Edward G. Robinson as Keyes Keyes, who plays the keenly, suspicious insurance investigator making Double Indemnity one of the best film noir movies of all time (Top 10,…

was adapted by French critics because the films featured techniques such as black and white coloring and peculiar camera angles. The Noir genre depicts a dark and hostile nature, and it has several genre conventions such as the anti-hero and the femme fatale. Since the Noir genre depicts a dark and hostile atmosphere, the prosperity experienced ambiguity.…

narrative and the setting that creates the tone and mood. The setting in Film Noir was influenced by the corruption of the War and the aftermath. The storyline surrounds the male protagonist, who is depressed due to his horrible past and meets the femme fatale, who is undeniably sexy. This causes a turning point in his life. The negativity mood that influenced these narrative conventions come from the American Psyche during the Great Depression in the 1930s, as well as the unstable economic…

The representation of Lola Lola is, as suggested above, a new incarnation of woman. Thus, she does not fit into the classic manipulative/sexual female role of a femme fatale and, instead, occupies a much more dimensional character within the film. As Anton Kaes proposes “Lola Lola personified not only the vamp, but also a nurturing mother who strokes the beard of the starry-eyed professor and prepares breakfast for him after their first night together”. Her ability to move between both of these…