femme fatale are spider women
“She is not a woman who creates a family. Some are smart with women. Some others, crude. You are not smart.”
The Bluey-Bluey clown (Stanley Prager), in "Gun Crazy" (1950). Joseph H. Lewis shot “Gun Crazy”, a B level film noir in 1950. In this film, he tells the love story of Bart and Laurie. Bart loves weapons eagerly since he was a child. He meets Laurie in a performance at the circus: she plays a woman cowboy in the show and she is really skillful with weapons. They meet each other and form a Bonnie and Clyde-type couple. They start robbing banks because they don’t want to work. Besides, Laurie loves pulling the trigger of her revolver. Bart, on the other hand, although he is a real fan of weapons, has never spilled blood. Eventually, the woman triumphs and murders begin. At the end of the movie, the man shoots his mate. The gunshots alert the police and Barts also dies there. The woman, a delinquent, puts the poor man in an adventure with a tragic ending. There is a moment when Bart, wounded, foresees his destiny: “We’ll be together. I don’t know why. Maybe we are like a weapon and ammunition, they are always together”. Apart from being the best movie of Film Noir, it shows the delicate and wild portrait of a femme fatale.
That’s the way the mysterious and attractive women that the American film noir created are: their desire for power destroyed the weak men around them, and women were self destroyed. Misfortunate women have always existed in literature and cinema. However, from 1940 to 1958, the US Film noir –this year Orson Welles shot “Touch of Evil” and then arrived the Neo Noir- and the films that were made painted in our eyes the dark images of misfortune women. Although for many the Film Noir is more a movement than a genre, we need to look at the political and social aspects of that period in the US in order to analyze the woman that this film phenomenon depicted. During World War II in the US, the social changes made the emancipation of the woman possible and increased the presence of woman in the film noir. Lizabeth Scott (1922) shows the situation of that moment in an interview in “El Cine Negro Americano” (Laertes): “I took part in many of the film noir of that age because many films of that genre were shot. It seems that it really pleased to a great number of spectators. I am sure that the phenomenon was closely and psychologically related to the end of the war. Many men were in the war and met many beautiful women, I men, really misfortune women, a wonderful attractive image.”
We also need to look at the noir book production of that time. The main characters of these novels, that is, a private detective and a misfortune woman were shown in films during the next years. Nevertheless, many films were based in noir novels. And so, in order to sharpen the ambiguous profile of the femme fatale, the pulp readings become a useful weapon, such as: “Double Indemnity” Billy Wilder (1944) and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” Tay Garnett (1946) which were based on two works by James M. Cain. In these two films, there are two archetype misfortune women: Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, who played a wonderful role. Before, these were women who, by using their seduction, got hold of the economic power that men possess. In order to gain money, luxury and power, they smoked, danced, used weapons and drove cars irresponsibly. They used beauty and sexuality as a needle and a thread to sew dangerous spider webs (the French created the term femme fatale, Americans liked spider woman better). There are also fatalistic women. In Wilder’s work, the two main characters, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwick) and Walter (Fred MacMurray) shot each other after a decisive line in the dialogue:
Phyllis: “We are worn-out”
Walter: “You are more that I am. Bye, my dear".
Sweet and cruel
The Film Noir is full of women’s wickedness. However, in 1945 John M. Stahl directed “Leave her to Heaven” and the evil behavior of the main character could frighten anyone. While Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) –she also took part in Otto Preminger’s masterpiece “Laura”- is going to her father’s funeral, she meets Richars Harland (Cornel Wilde), a writer, on a train. They fall in love with each other and get married. She also meets Danny, her brother-in-law; he is disabled and in a wheel-chair. The love for her husband is so big that she doesn’t want to share him with anybody. So, she gets jealous for the attention that Danny gets from his brother. Therefore, she lets him drown on the lake. She wants to tie her husband firmly to her so she gets pregnant; but she throws herself down on the stairs so she can lose the baby. “If you only knew how much I hate this monster that I carry inside” she tells to her sister. Eventually, she commits suicide. Even when she is close to death, she holds the hand of her obsession tightly. After all, she would also like to take her husband to the other world. This obsessive love story, situated between drama and noir, keeps the real model of the extreme behavior of the femme fatale. Extraordinary.
The Bluey-Bluey clown (Stanley Prager), in "Gun Crazy" (1950). Joseph H. Lewis shot “Gun Crazy”, a B level film noir in 1950. In this film, he tells the love story of Bart and Laurie. Bart loves weapons eagerly since he was a child. He meets Laurie in a performance at the circus: she plays a woman cowboy in the show and she is really skillful with weapons. They meet each other and form a Bonnie and Clyde-type couple. They start robbing banks because they don’t want to work. Besides, Laurie loves pulling the trigger of her revolver. Bart, on the other hand, although he is a real fan of weapons, has never spilled blood. Eventually, the woman triumphs and murders begin. At the end of the movie, the man shoots his mate. The gunshots alert the police and Barts also dies there. The woman, a delinquent, puts the poor man in an adventure with a tragic ending. There is a moment when Bart, wounded, foresees his destiny: “We’ll be together. I don’t know why. Maybe we are like a weapon and ammunition, they are always together”. Apart from being the best movie of Film Noir, it shows the delicate and wild portrait of a femme fatale.
That’s the way the mysterious and attractive women that the American film noir created are: their desire for power destroyed the weak men around them, and women were self destroyed. Misfortunate women have always existed in literature and cinema. However, from 1940 to 1958, the US Film noir –this year Orson Welles shot “Touch of Evil” and then arrived the Neo Noir- and the films that were made painted in our eyes the dark images of misfortune women. Although for many the Film Noir is more a movement than a genre, we need to look at the political and social aspects of that period in the US in order to analyze the woman that this film phenomenon depicted. During World War II in the US, the social changes made the emancipation of the woman possible and increased the presence of woman in the film noir. Lizabeth Scott (1922) shows the situation of that moment in an interview in “El Cine Negro Americano” (Laertes): “I took part in many of the film noir of that age because many films of that genre were shot. It seems that it really pleased to a great number of spectators. I am sure that the phenomenon was closely and psychologically related to the end of the war. Many men were in the war and met many beautiful women, I men, really misfortune women, a wonderful attractive image.”
We also need to look at the noir book production of that time. The main characters of these novels, that is, a private detective and a misfortune woman were shown in films during the next years. Nevertheless, many films were based in noir novels. And so, in order to sharpen the ambiguous profile of the femme fatale, the pulp readings become a useful weapon, such as: “Double Indemnity” Billy Wilder (1944) and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” Tay Garnett (1946) which were based on two works by James M. Cain. In these two films, there are two archetype misfortune women: Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, who played a wonderful role. Before, these were women who, by using their seduction, got hold of the economic power that men possess. In order to gain money, luxury and power, they smoked, danced, used weapons and drove cars irresponsibly. They used beauty and sexuality as a needle and a thread to sew dangerous spider webs (the French created the term femme fatale, Americans liked spider woman better). There are also fatalistic women. In Wilder’s work, the two main characters, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwick) and Walter (Fred MacMurray) shot each other after a decisive line in the dialogue:
Phyllis: “We are worn-out”
Walter: “You are more that I am. Bye, my dear".
Sweet and cruel
The Film Noir is full of women’s wickedness. However, in 1945 John M. Stahl directed “Leave her to Heaven” and the evil behavior of the main character could frighten anyone. While Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) –she also took part in Otto Preminger’s masterpiece “Laura”- is going to her father’s funeral, she meets Richars Harland (Cornel Wilde), a writer, on a train. They fall in love with each other and get married. She also meets Danny, her brother-in-law; he is disabled and in a wheel-chair. The love for her husband is so big that she doesn’t want to share him with anybody. So, she gets jealous for the attention that Danny gets from his brother. Therefore, she lets him drown on the lake. She wants to tie her husband firmly to her so she gets pregnant; but she throws herself down on the stairs so she can lose the baby. “If you only knew how much I hate this monster that I carry inside” she tells to her sister. Eventually, she commits suicide. Even when she is close to death, she holds the hand of her obsession tightly. After all, she would also like to take her husband to the other world. This obsessive love story, situated between drama and noir, keeps the real model of the extreme behavior of the femme fatale. Extraordinary.
