Men have been blaming women for their own damn weaknesses for as long as they’ve been telling stories. A favorite scapegoat is the femme fatale, “deadly woman.” Deadly has been luring men to their doom since Eve ate the apple and took the rap for humanity getting kicked out of paradise. Cleopatra, Circe, Delilah and Aphrodite (goddess of the sideways glance) are all members of this sorority.
It only makes sense that the cynicism in noir fiction would fasten on the femme fatale. Story after story, film after film dismisses the woman as wife and mother and loyal confidante and fixates on the deadly woman.
But not all femme fatales are created equal. There are the sexpots with an agenda. Examples are Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis from Double Indemnity, Lana Turner as Cora from The Postman Always Rings Twice, Claire Trevor as Helen from Murder My Sweet and Barbara Stanwyck again as Martha from The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (the divine Stanwyck couldn’t play innocent if her hair was on fire.) In these stories the guy knows from the get-go the woman is big trouble, but he just has to have sex with her. It’s the same impulse that gets a widow spider’s head chewed off.
I’m a fan of the vulnerable femme fatale. As a reader and a viewer, I want to stand alongside the troubled male protagonist and hope that maybe, maybe she’s telling me the truth and that a happy ending is possible. For that I give you Jane Greer.
Take a look at Greer as Kathie in Out of the Past. She’s young and beautiful. Her gangster boyfriend claims she shot him and stole forty K from him (mind you, this is back in 1947!) Her eyes get all dewy and her lip trembles and Ibelieve it when she says that yeah, she shot him, she hated him, but she never took the money. The poor detective (Robert Mitchum) doesn’t have a prayer. Talk about your dramatic tension. Time and again she lies to Mitchum, she almost gets him killed and I’m right there with him thinking maybe it’s a mistake. Far into the movie she says to him, “Don’t you believe me?” He says, “Baby, I don’t care.”
Wow. I’ve so been there. He’s being played. He knows it, I know it. It’s 1947. It’s Out of the Past. It’s relevant. Trust me.