During the second world war, women were required to join the workforce. They did so in great numbers, taking on the jobs typically associated with men. The state took measures to relieve them of their domestic responsibilities, putting a universal childcare system in motion. Women went to work in factories, operating heavy machinery, as engineers, as nurses and in transportation, providing military support in a range of capacities. This mobilization brought about significant social change. No longer reliant on a male breadwinner, women gained a sense of financial independence, providing them with the opportunity for more personal freedoms like social and sexual independence.
After the war, returning servicemen were faced with the reality of a new social structure. In Women Workers in the Second World War, Penny Summerfield explores discourse around whether the quality of women’s lives were in fact improved post World War Two. On the one hand, the Second World War is often perceived as a turning point in the history of women’s rights, but on the other, a reversal of the mobilization efforts was initiated; many of the measures put in place to facilitate such independence were only temporary wartime action. In the absence of their husbands, women were financially independent and socially empowered; a circumstance which was met with significant resistance upon their husband’s return. This created tension between women’s traditional domestic responsibilities and their newfound independence.
This is the historical context of classical Film Noir. Consequently the Femme Fatale can be read as the contemporaneous personification of female independence. She is brazen in her sexuality and autonomous in her actions. In Film Noir, the Femme Fatale is contrasted by a Girl Next Door character. In mythology, this relationship is comparable to that of the Madonna – whore dichotomy. They are the two archetypal poles of femininity: one is virginal and maternal, the other is sexual and sinful. In Film Noir, the Girl Next Door is often the protagonist’s original love interest, offering him a stable life of traditional values. Where the Femme Fatale has ambitions of wealth and social status, the Girl Next Door dreams of marriage and children. The Femme Fatale is associated with the debauchery of urban living; low-key lighting and shadows indicate her mystery and duplicity whereas the Girl Next Door leads a quiet, domesticated and comparatively controllable life.
Key examples of the Femme Fatale
In The Killers (1946, Siodmak), the Femme Fatale, Kitty (Ava Gardner), is first shown in a low-lit bar, in a long form-fitting gown, whereas her Girl-Next-Door counterpart, Lily (Virginia Christine), first appears in an apron. This iconography indicates the ‘type of woman’ that each represents: the sexual and the domestic. The protagonist in The Killers, known as the Swede, quickly abandons faithful Lily for the alluring Kitty; a decision that hastens his descent into the criminal world. Kitty is caught with stolen jewelry, a crime for which the Swede takes the fall. Upon his release from prison, Kitty has taken a new lover and the couple are intent on double crossing the Swede out of a large sum of money the three were to split after a robbery. By the end of The Killers, both the Swede and Kitty’s new lover have been murdered, and Kitty is left to answer to her crimes of robbery and deceit. A clip below from the Killers helps display’s Kitty’s function in the film.