Portrayal of women in film noir

Her character archetype is depicted as ordinary, often overshadowed by the femme fatale. She is known to be genuinely honest, innocent, and sweet. Similarly to the character of Fanny Price in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, the girl next door tends to embrace authenticity and traditional standards of either Christian morality or whichever other unwritten social rules governs how to behave. The girl-next-door often does refer to the fact she lives right next door to the male protagonist, possibly having known him for their entire lives.

Her character represents the quiet and constant love that has always been there, unseen and unnoticed by the male protagonist. Similarly to Fanny Price, the girl next door is often overlooked as a love interest. It is usually only after the male protagonist has gone through a series of soul crushing experiences with the femme fatale, similarly to Edmund Bertram's many heartbreaks over Mary Crawford, that he realizes that the girl-next-door, like Fanny Price, has been there all along, hoping for the male protagonist to finally notice and choose her. An example of this is in Cathy O’Donnell’s portrayal of Keechie in They Live by Night (Ray, 1948).[1]

The femme fatale, considered by many the central figure of film noir, is mysterious and enchanting. She is known for using her attractiveness and con artist tendencies to seduce and manipulate men, and, in neo-noir films like Mulholland Drive, lesbian women whenever they suit her purposes, into abusive relationships followed by heartbreak, mental breakdowns, or deadly situations. Her character is independent with undoubting confidence masking anti-social personality traits. The femme fatale does things to benefit herself alone, is contemptuous in rejecting authenticity and unwritten social rules, and does not care that other people often deem her immoral, bad, and/or even sociopathic.

Film Noir is understood as not a genre but an adaptable film style. As film scholar Raymond Durgnat[5] points out, film noir is a point in film history, not a genre. Influenced by German Expressionism film, Hollywood took the aesthetics of forties and fifties, as dark, urban landscapes, fused with crime and mystery. How the women were portrayed in film noir helped to fuel the narrative with plot twists and deception.

Much feminist interest comes from understanding how the female form is being used and what that represents. Feminist theory within the context of film noir often seeks to understand themes such as gender identity, sexuality, in relation to representation and power. Theorists and scholars explore both the problematic and beneficial implications to portrayals of women in film noir.

Janey Place writes in Women in Film Noir[6] that “film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art.” She explains that noir's female villains are central to the frame in the stylistic choices of the genre. She goes on to write that it is, “one of the few periods of film in which women are active, not static symbols, are intelligent and powerful, if destructively so, and derive power, not weakness, from their sexuality.”

Mary Ann Doane writes, “She is not the subject of feminism but a symptom of male fears about feminism. Nevertheless, the representation – like any representation –is not totally under the control of its producers and, once disseminated, comes to take on a life of its own.”[7]

Kate Stables writes that “the postmodern fatal woman is a creature of excess and spectacle, like the films she decorates.”

• The 1941 screwball comedy film Ball of Fire, was also poking fun at the already established cliches of film noir and of the femme fatale. The main source of the comedy, however, was in the film's intellectual, completely isolated, and socially clueless professor of linguistics, played by Gary Cooper, whose character arc leads to him overcoming his lack of confidence and gaining a healthy sense of both assertiveness and traditional masculinity. The film also provides a redemption arc for its seemingly cliched femme fatale, played by Barbara Stanwyck.
• The 1994 film The Mask, starring Jim Carrey, is also a parody of the film noir genre. Furthermore, the usual two female roles are subverted; Cameron Diaz's seeming femme fatale character is not only given a redemption arc, but the seeming girl next door character, played by Amy Yasbeck, turns out to be a façade concealing a very greedy and sociopathic person.