Film Still from Double IndeminityThe femme fatale will reside in a luxury home or apartment, she is not free to roam the (male) city. Her home is no regular, inviting family home; instead it is portrayed in a manner of opulence (Double Indemnity/Sunset Boulevard). This lavishness and excess is used as a sign to associate her character with evil and transgression. Large mirrors often dominate their rooms, a prop used to denote vanity as the femme fatale gazes at her own reflection (Double Indemnity/Gilda).
The femme fatale is lit in ‘hard, undiffused light’ making her glamorous and sexual yet ‘impenetrable’ (Spicer, 2002: 47). Her iconography includes long dark or blonde hair worn loose, full make-up, high heeled shoes, long legs, glistening jewellery (such as the gold anklet in Double Indemnity, above) and revealing costumes (Gledhill, 1998: 32) creating a highly sexualised image.
Film noir’s gender construction ‘is one of its most distinctive features’ (Spicer, 2002: 84). The femme fatale ‘bedecked in her glittering and deadly sexual allure’ (Hirsch, 1999: 6) is ‘one of the most persistent reincarnations of modern femininity’ (Spicer, 2002: 90). Born of male anxiety her sexuality and duplicitous nature make her a threat to patriarchal order. She is always childless with any sense of family ‘depicted in either a too-sunny glow of banality or as sterile and monstrous’ (Klinger in Grant, 2003: 82), a representation which contested the ‘post-war consensus’ that women should be defined by motherhood and marriage (Spicer, 2002: 91).
The femme fatale is lit in ‘hard, undiffused light’ making her glamorous and sexual yet ‘impenetrable’ (Spicer, 2002: 47). Her iconography includes long dark or blonde hair worn loose, full make-up, high heeled shoes, long legs, glistening jewellery (such as the gold anklet in Double Indemnity, above) and revealing costumes (Gledhill, 1998: 32) creating a highly sexualised image.
Film noir’s gender construction ‘is one of its most distinctive features’ (Spicer, 2002: 84). The femme fatale ‘bedecked in her glittering and deadly sexual allure’ (Hirsch, 1999: 6) is ‘one of the most persistent reincarnations of modern femininity’ (Spicer, 2002: 90). Born of male anxiety her sexuality and duplicitous nature make her a threat to patriarchal order. She is always childless with any sense of family ‘depicted in either a too-sunny glow of banality or as sterile and monstrous’ (Klinger in Grant, 2003: 82), a representation which contested the ‘post-war consensus’ that women should be defined by motherhood and marriage (Spicer, 2002: 91).
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