More Critics on Film Noir

 

The problem for feminist analysis of the impulse of traditional criticism to locate meaning in character is first that it leads the critic into moralistic assessment of the heroine and her subjectivity in terms of its truth to the actual condition of women, or to supposed female aspiration, or to a feminist perspective on either. The problem with this is that ideological myths about women are as much a part of the real world as any other construct. Thus to use a particular individual's notion of 'the realistic' as a criterion of truth can only lead to disagreement, and if used simply to dismiss what is defined as stereotypical, to the elimination of the chance to examine the power of recognition which certain character structures or stereotypes may invoke.

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One form of subversion that feminists will look for then, are those moments when in the generic play of convention and stereotype the male discourse loses control and the woman's voice disrupts it, making its assumptions seem 'strange'. From this perspective the question the feminist critic asks, is not 'does this image of woman please me or not, do I identify with it or not?’ but rather of a particular conjuncture of plot device, character, dialogue or visual style: what is being said about women here, who is speaking, for whom?

 

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The ultimate ideological effect of this unstable and fractured characterization of women depends on the organisation of each particular film. As an aspect of the genre's theatricality such characterisations contribute to the instability and uncertainty of the hero's world; to the ever deceiving flux of appearance and reality. In this sense they express a male existential anguish at the failure of masculine desire. But in the course of this, noir female characterisations, while they superficially confirm popular stereotypes about women, in their stylisation and play with the surfaces of the cinematic image they arguably foreground some of the features of that image. This is not to claim the progressiveness of the cycle but merely to assert its ideological interest for feminists.

 

                                                                                                Christine Gledhill, “Klute 1: a contemporary film noir and feminist criticism” (12-13, 18)

 

 

 

 

The two most common types of women in film noir are the exciting, childless whores, or the boring, potentially childbearing sweethearts. However, in other respects, the normal representation of women as the founders of families undergoes an interesting displacement.  For it is the strange and compelling absence of 'normal' family relations in these films that hints at important shifts in the position of women in American society. Among these changes must be listed the temporary but widespread introduction of women into the American labour force during World War II, and the changing economic and ideological function of the family that parallels the changing structures and goals of an increasingly monopolistic economy. These economic changes forced certain changes in the traditional organisation of the family; and the underlying sense of horror and uncertainty in film noir may be seen, in part, as an indirect response to this forcible assault on traditional family structures and the traditional and conservative values which they embodied.

 

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With the increasing size of corporations, the growth of monopolies and the accelerated elimination of small businesses it became increasingly hard for even the petit bourgeoisie to continue to believe in certain dominant myths. Foremost among these was the dream of equality of opportunity in business, and of the God-given right of every man to be his own boss. Increasingly the petit bourgeoisie were forced into selling their labour and working for the big companies, instead of running their own businesses and working 'for themselves'. It is this factor of being forced to work according to the goals and purposes formulated by someone else, that accounts in large measure for the feelings of alienation and helplessness in film noir.

          It is no accident that Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944) seeks an escape from the dull routine of the insurance company that he works for, in an affair with the deadly and exotic Phyllis Dietrichson. The possession of Phyllis Dietrichson, as of any of the other film noir women who function as sexual commodities, is, in the magic world of the movies, held up as a tempting means of escape from the boredom and frustration of a routinised and alienated existence. Nor is it accidental that Neff, on his way up to his office to make his final confession, encounters the elevator man who tells him that he never could buy medical insurance from the company that he has worked for all of his life, because he has a bad heart. It is this feeling of being lost in a world of corporate values (represented in different films by big business, the police, the mob etc.) that are not sensitive to the needs and desires of the individual, that permeates film noir.

 

 

In Double Indemnity the act of killing the husband serves as the supreme act of violence against family life, and has, in some sense, to be atoned for through the mutual destruction of the lovers in the macabre shoot-out, at the family house, which ends the film. It is perhaps most clear in this movie that the expression of sexuality and the institution of marriage are at odds with one another, and that both pleasure and death lie outside the safe circle of family relations.

          Moreover there is clearly an impetus in film noir to transgress the boundaries of this circle; for the presence of husbands on crutches or in wheelchairs (Double Indemnity, Lady From Shanghai) suggests that impotence is somehow a normal component of the married state. Other imagery in these films suggests that a routinised boredom and a sense of stifling entrapment are characteristic of marriage. . . .The family home in Double Indemnity is the place where three people who hate each other spend endlessly boring evenings together. The husband does not merely not notice his

wife, he ignores her sexually; so that it is only under Neff’s gaze that her long legs become the focal point of both the room as Neff sees it and the

composition of the frame. While Neff looks at her, the husband looks at the insurance papers which function as his own death warrant, in the

sense that they are the device through which the lovers plan to benefit from the large insurance payments on his death. Neff is subsequently

caught up in the inescapable cycle of desire, death and retribution.

 

 

Sylvia Harvey, “Woman's place: the absent family of film noir” (25, 26-27, 29)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The threat to Neff which Lola represents is precisely her centrality within the family, her role of daughter, subject to the Law of the Father. As witness, she functions as a reference to, a sign of, the Symbolic Order which he seeks to transgress - she's a 'nice kid'. He leaves the house, and arrives at his car to find her sitting in the front seat. . . .Neff’s attitude is paternal. As he drops her off in town the voice-over comments: 'the father was a dead pigeon'.

          In order to simulate Dietrichson's death from a moving train and claim the double indemnity on his life, Neff has to take his place. In so doing he not only becomes Phyllis's 'husband', but Lola's 'father'. In destroying the family unit, in testing the Law, Neff has entered in impossible family, a family explicitly based on a sacrificial murder, and thus socially censored. After murdering Dietrichson and taking his place on the train his desire vanishes: having successfully achieved a replica of the family, he is now in the position of the master in an other symbolic order, one that exists alongside and in the face of the social order represented by Keyes. The car fails to start: he and Phyllis part on a reluctant embrace. On the way to the drug store, after establishing his alibi, Neff’s voice-over says: 'I couldn't hear my own footsteps ... it was the walk of a dead man'. The impossible family is a nightmare. Neff exists in a no-man's-land.

 

                                                                                Claire Johnston, “Double Indemnity” (106-08)

 

 

 

These critics point to the fact that, like all other film movements, film noir emerged from a period of political instability: 1941-58, the time of the Second World War and the Cold War. In the United States this was a time of repressed insecurity and paranoia: the American dream seemed in tatters and American national identity under severe strain. As a result of the war women had moved into the workforce and had expanded their horizons beyond the domestic sphere; at the same time men were removed from that sphere - which they had controlled - to go and fight. The men's return to peacetime was a period of maladjustment: what had 'their' women been up to? where was their role at work and in the political culture generally? and what had they fought the war for, only to find the United States involved in a new kind of hostility based in suspicion and paranoia? So the question of national identity was also bound up with the question of masculine identity.

 

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But that's only half the story, because film noir is not so clear-cut in its misogyny. Film noir gives a very central role to the femme fatale and privileges her as active, intelligent, powerful, dominant and in charge of her own sexuality – at least until the end of the film when she pays for it {through death or submission to the patriarchal system). In this respect, she constitutes a break with classic Hollywood cinema's representation of woman (as mother/whore, wife/mistress - passive). These women are interested only in themselves (as the frequent reflections of them in mirrors attest) and in getting enough money, by all means foul, to guarantee their independence. By being in contradiction with the ideological construct of women, such an image construction makes readings against the grain eminently possible. As Janey Place (1980, 37) says, as far as these women are concerned, 'It is not their inevitable demise we remember but rather their strong, dangerous and above all, exciting sexuality'. These women are symbols of 'unnatural' phallic power: toting guns and cigarette holders like the best of the men - to get what they want. They move about easily in traditionally male spaces, bars, etc. They might even dress like men with their very tailored suits with broad shoulderpads; or they might slink out of the shadows, thigh-first, dressed in clinging sequinned evening gowns - either way they are mysterious, ambiguous and deadly (guns and looks can kill). In both instances they are empowered by their sexuality.

                                                                 

Susan Hayward, Key Concepts in Cinema Studies (116-17, 119)