Favorite Femme Fatales from Film Noir Movies
Beautiful women and dangerous ones that lead men into a life of desperation and despair that is the genre of film known as femme fatale. This type of movie hit its hay-day from right after WWII, until the early 1950s. There were films before of this type of genre, but after the war they became very popular for film audiences. The movies were truly a hard-hitting hint at feminism and power, but with twist.
You know a femme fatale movie by the role of the women. They are cast with the idea that a woman is not always the gentle, supportive and sugary sweet nice woman at home. In fact, women in the role are just opposite, and certainly before the war there were not as many produced. Men’s roles are based around the feeling that once they become involved with the women, they’ll loose everything they have, emotionally and physically that is. Early crime detective stories from writers like Michael Arlen in 1940 started the popularity of the genre of film noir on screen.
Of course not all women portrayed in the movies of noir are sinister or evil. Some are trapped in situations that they have no control of, but in the end-use it to benefit themselves, and the love interest or partner they are involved with. In Double Indemnity in 1944, Barbara Stanwick uses her insurance salesman by conniving him into knocking off her husband, so they can run away together with cash in hand. A few years before in 1940, Betty Davis played a wife who had killed her husband, but was caught when a letter surfaced blaming her for the murder.
Femme Fatales in movies did not have to be the main star either. In 1945 the film Mildred Pierce starred Joan Crawford, as the over protective mother of a daughter that became a murderer. Typically though, the movie centered on a woman trying to escape another man, like in the movie The Postman Always Ring Twice. It is a straightforward noir femme fatale movie starring Lana Turner. In this movie she struck a deal with her lover to kill her unsuspecting husband, so she can be free.
In 1946 Rita Hayworth was Gilda. She strutted around the screen in her long black gloves, and singing “Put the Blame on Mame”, and had cheated on her husband, with an ex boyfriend, and employed by her husband at one of his many casinos. Everyone in the audience seemed to like Gilda, and even the President of the U.S., Harry Truman had his picture made with her, while she lounged on top of a piano while he played a tune. Other movies of the late 1940s that were popular femme fatale were “They Live by Night” and “Gun Crazy” in 1949.
In the early 1950s the saga of the femme fatale continued with such popular movies as Niagara, in which the rising star Marilyn Monroe played a victim of an unhappy marriage, and murdered her husband. The movie genre continued until the mid 1950s when slowly it was replaced by softer and less daring roles for women in Hollywood. It was a time of compliance, and a return to traditional values. People in Hollywood that were making these types of movies were under investigation for communism, and the genre of femme fatal slow faded into the background.
It is certain that careers were launched because of the popular fascination with the dangerous and independent woman’s roles of the classic era of Hollywood. Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwick went on a developed outstanding movie careers that spanned decades. Men too made solid careers because they starred with femme fatale women, Robert Mitchum, Joseph Cotton, and Fred MacMurray, had illustrious and solid roles in movies and Fred MacMurray starred in a long running TV show in the 1960s.
Femme fatale slowly evolved from books and detective movies into a unique genre of their own. It worked because America was psychologically ready to look for change, and there were for a brief period a group of directors and actors that were willing to try something new. More importantly, this understated genre gave us the unbelievable talents of a group of women that dared to be different and bad at the same time. Danger is always intriguing.
