The Classic Film Noir Femme Fatale
The world of Film Noir is a sexy and mysterious one. These Hollywood crime dramas were popularized in the 1940s, full of hardened detectives, criminals, trans-Atlantic accents, sex, murder, and Femmes Fatales. Film Noir is a genre of film that is categorized by its themes and even films made today are put into the Film Noir category, but I want to talk about specifically the Femmes Fatales of the 1940s and 1950s. The Femmes Fatales that came out of these eras is what we think of when we hear the words “Film Noir”. The Femme Fatale is bold, beautiful, and bad to the bone. By definition, a Femme Fatale means “fatal woman” in French, a woman who is very attractive in a mysterious way, usually leading men into dangerous and compromising situations causing their destruction. The Femme Fatale is known to be magnetic and irresistible, which often makes a sensational first impression, immediately grabbing the protagonists and audience’s attention. She is a sexual being and uses her sexuality as a tool or a weapon to get what she wants. Ideally, the Femme Fatale is a woman that doesn’t submit to men’s desires.
Early in the history of film, 1920s film actress Theda Bara popularized the Femme Fatale trope. She was one of cinema’s early sex symbols, known for her dark eyes and lips. Her Femme Fatale roles earned her the nickname “The Vamp”, later fueling the rising popularity in “vamp” roles that encapsulated exoticism and sexual domination. The archetype carried into the 1940s, where the Femme Fatale we know today was born. This all started with a film called The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as a detective and Mary Astor in the Femme Fatale role. Both beautiful and intelligent, her character is an accomplished liar and a master manipulator, yet was big with audiences due to her irresistible and attention-grabbing mysterious beauty and criminal tendencies. She is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and knows exactly how to get it. During the 1940s and WWII, many women were called away from their domestic roles in order to help with the war efforts, leading some men to fear that women had gained too much power and independence. Men feared the Femme Fatale, but women admired her.
The classic Film Noir Femme Fatale has an amazing sense of fashion and style; never a hair out of place, with flawless makeup. Take, for example, Rita Hayworth in Gilda and her pin-curled, Veronica Lake-esque waves, seductively parted to the side. The curls or waves fall over one side of her face to keep some of her features shrouded and mysterious. Since early Film Noirs are in black and white, the classic color red was worn on the lips for impact on film. Red lipstick is a force to be reckoned with. To be a true Femme Fatale, silk cocktail dresses should be worn, like the dark and sexy clothes Ava Gardener wears in The Killers. Femmes Fatales are very sophisticated and classy, and can also be seen wearing women’s suits in earlier noir films. For many women the Femme Fatale is seen as strong and empowering, which is why this character has stayed in cinema history to this day.
