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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)