The Femme Fatale
Research methods
The aim of my research was learn about the relationship between women and film; I have focused my research particularly on the representation of women in film rather than women working within the film industry behind the camera. Bruce Crowther wrote about film noir, “a powerfully impressive group which against the odds made a huge dramatic impression upon audiences and engineered a major change on the perception of women in popular cinema”. Because of this my area of research has been in Femme Fatale from the world of film noir as this seems illustrate women in a stronger dominant role.
I wanted to know how and why women were represented in the way they are in film and whether or not these representations are good, bad or stereotyped according to different critical perspectives.
My main source of primary research was to watch Femme Fatale in play in Film Noir texts and I also researched into the industry and its aims. Film noie emerged after the war in the late forties in American B movies. During the war many women had taken on male roles and had become more independent and less like the ‘housewife’ before the war. Women took on typical male jobs and a new type of women emerged. World War II induced an unparalleled collective response from women, resulting in new perspectives and rising ambitions. When men returned from fighting in Europe women had there jobs taken away from them, but the taste of independence was still present and women yearned for it. At the time of film noir there was confusion in the balance of female and male roles and film noir reflected this. There was unrest between women who wanted strong role models and men who wanted to feel superior especially after fighting a testosterone fuelled war. It was perhaps this unrest which caused the friction between gender representations in film noir, “whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood’s profound post war affection for morbid drama.” Cinema often reflects the view of society at the time, the industry that made these movies were trying to entertain and excite the audience, however the film still needed to be accepted by the dominant ideology of this time and this is useful in explaining the femme fatale.
