Femme Fatale – Bitch Flicks

Eva Green vs. Frank Miller: A Feminist Revolt in a Man’s World

Even when Eva Green chooses to take part in obviously bad movies, she somehow manages to carry them to a higher level of quality all on her own. Such is the case with two of her films: ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ and ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.’ …Both of which starred Green in major femme fatale roles, and both of which feel, in part, like pro-feminist reactions to the original films they follow.

Guest post written by Josh J. Bell.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Eva Green is possibly my favorite dramatic performer on the planet. Her striking presence and physicality, that raspy, compelling voice, her often unhinged acting style; she has an amazing talent for raising the entertainment value of anything she’s involved in. Just watch Penny Dreadful, which featured a 10-minute long séance scene: 10 straight minutes of Green writhing around, babbling in weird voices, and somehow it never once becomes tedious. The woman is one of the major unappreciated MVPs of the film industry right now.

Even when Green chooses to take part in obviously bad movies, she somehow manages to carry them to a higher level of quality all on her own. Such is the case with two of her films I’d like to compare and discuss: 300: Rise of an Empire and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Sin City and 300 have strangely parallel trajectories as franchises. Both are based on graphic novels written by Frank Miller; both were released in the mid-2000s, and were highly accurate to the source material, recreating panels from the graphic novels down to the tiniest details. Both are post-modern takes on classic film genres no longer very popular at the both office: film noir and sword and sandal historical epics. Both were highly stylized with slow-motion violence and sex, distinctive color-palettes, and heavy use of CGI sets. And finally, both franchises released sequels in 2014, both of which starred Eva Green in major femme fatale roles, and both of which feel, in part, like pro-feminist reactions to the original films they follow. If that all is coincidence, it has to be one of the most stunning series of coincidences in Hollywood history.

Now, Frank Miller is many things but no one would ever describe him as a feminist. He is notorious for writing female characters who are highly sexualized, possess little to no story agency, and usually have some cruel and humiliating violence or death inflicted upon them. In short, he’s about as old school and outspoken a misogynist as you can be and still remain employable in the comics industry (which says more about the industry than it does him, but that’s another essay entirely).

The original Sin City and 300 films did little to remove or minimize Miller’s lack of respect for his female characters. Women such as Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) and Gail (Rosario Dawson) were allowed to be powerful only through their sexuality and violence; they remained passive supporters of their male counterparts’ storylines. The remaining female characters were used merely for window dressing and cannon fodder.

The sequels, flawed as they may be, diverge from their origin films. While Frank Miller has claimed to have a 300 prequel in the works for years, it, like many of his proposed projects over the last few decades, has yet to materialize. Unwilling to wait on the increasingly irrelevant writer, Warner Brothers pushed ahead, and the resulting film was instead written by the first film’s director, Zack Snyder, with Miller’s only contribution being whatever he actually finished of that prequel comic serving as inspiration.

Snyder’s history with writing female characters and feminist ideas into his screenplays is… inconsistent, to say the least. He strikes me as someone who has at least a passing interest and respect for feminism, but isn’t really particularly dedicated to it. When looking at 300: Rise of an Empire and Snyder’s even more controversial Sucker Punch, it’s hard to deny that he isn’t at least making an effort to write an empowering story for women. But most of his films (300, Watchmen, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) ignore the handful of women characters, often seeming annoyed by or even outright hostile to their presence.

Despite the fact that I have yet to fully forgive him for Batman v Superman, I generally try to cut Snyder some slack, because he a) is genuinely talented, and b) does usually seem to learn from his mistakes, however slowly. Case in point, 300: Rise of an Empire, which comes across as almost a response to or apology for the previous film. The film’s protagonist, the Athenian Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton), takes a rather dim view of the brutality of the Spartans, as evidenced by a needlessly long scene of a group of Spartans brutally beating one guy during training. Perhaps this was Snyder’s way of addressing the accusations toward 300 that he was promoting fascism and eugenics, not to mention the first film’s racism and ableism. Also, Queen Gorgo is given far more screen time and more to do, including leading a Spartan army to battle, and none of which involves seducing her husband’s rivals for political favor. Now if only Snyder had thought to include a positive queer character as recompense for the blatant and historically inaccurate homophobia of the first film.

But as with seemingly every project she appears in, this is Eva Green’s stage, and the really interesting stuff begins and ends with her. Green plays Artemisia, very loosely based on a real historical figure of the same name. Despite being the villain, she is the true star of the film, and director Noam Murro knows it. The camera often lingers on Green during long pauses, allowing some truly stellar acting moments, even though whenever she’s absent, the film could care less about acting, preferring to keep a kinetic pace from one gratuitous image of violence and sexuality to the next.

Green is nothing short of transcendent in this role, one she’s honestly overqualified for, but Snyder doesn’t exactly leave her with nothing to work with either. Artemisia’s arc is fascinating to analyze and casts the entire film in a different light when viewed up close.

Artemisia is not only the chief villain, completely overshadowing Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), but she is retroactively cast as the true mastermind behind the events of the previous film as well. We are shown that in fact Artemisia is the true power behind the Persian throne, with Xerxes being little more than a puppet ruler she manipulated into invading Greece, even being responsible for his delusions of godhood. As much as I normally hate retcons (see Spectre for the worst example of the hackneyed “secret villain responsible for literally everything” trope), it’s noteworthy that Snyder not only gives Artemisia agency, but in fact makes her responsible for the inciting events of the entire franchise. Without Artemisia, there is no 300.

Artemisia’s backstory and motivation are even more interesting. As a child, she was captured by Greek soldiers who raped and murdered her family in front of her, and then kept her as a sex slave for years before discarding her half-dead in the streets. She is then found by a Persian ambassador (Peter Mensah), who took her in and trained her in combat and strategy. From there she rose through the ranks until she was the most trusted advisor to the Persian King Darius (Igal Naor), favored even above his son Xerxes, and leader of the entire Persian Navy.

Rape as a backstory for violent, vengeful, strong, or ambitious female characters is one of the most overdone plots in modern fiction, let’s admit that right now. It is ridiculous how writers behave as though the only justification or motivation a woman can have for revenge is rape and sexual assault. So Snyder wins no points for dipping into this dry well and employing this trope. However, normally the rape-revenge heroine is a… well, heroine. Rape is a horrific crime; it’s difficult to watch on-screen and is often triggering to survivors, so filmmakers don’t tend to subject characters to that kind of traumatic ordeal on-screen if we’re not meant to empathize with them.

Eva Green’s performance combined with this backstory makes Artemisia by far the most three-dimensional character in either 300 or its sequel (although that’s not saying much). As a result, she’s far easier to identify with and root for than the bland and lifeless Themistokles, who is little more than a Leonidas clone, and Sullivan Stapleton as an actor is so massively out of his league next to Green that it’s laughable. The film’s divisive, aggressive sex scene between them is interesting and over the top all at once, and while the scene’s merits are debatable — whether it sexualizes a rape survivor, empowers her, or both — it’s hard to deny Green owns the whole scene, even if only by virtue of her being a far superior actor than Stapleton.

In the finale, Artemisia and Themistokles face off in an epic sword fight, during which Green delivers one of the all-time great insults (“You fight harder than you fuck!”), which finally culminates in her death at the point of Themistokles’s sword. Now this by itself might be a coincidence, swords are phallic instruments by default and not every movie featuring swordplay is trying to say anything symbolically about sex or gender dynamics. But when the sword goes right into Artemisia’s midsection and she forces it deeper into her, almost seeming to orgasm at the feeling of it, and then falls to the ground in a position mirroring that which her captors left her for dead as a child, while Themistokles (whose appearance looks similar to the hoplites who killed her family) stands over her, there’s no way to argue that this scene isn’t inviting direct comparison to Artemesia’s origin story.

There are two ways to interpret this. One is that 300: Rise of an Empire is a violently misogynist movie that vilifies a rape survivor and sees the symbolic rape of her demise as just punishment for her sin of being an ambitious woman. That’s an extreme view, but given our country just elected a racist misogynist who bragged about sexual assault over a potential first woman POTUS, it certainly is still possible for that level of hate to exist in our movies. However, I choose to believe that the film actually subtly condemns our supposed hero, encouraging you to root for the villain and reexamine the sexist roots of the macho power fantasy the first film provided. When the final shot of the film is Themistokles coming right at the camera like a horror movie monster, in fact just like the sea serpent that comes right at the camera during a random dream sequence that otherwise has no clear purpose, it’s not unreasonable to interpret this as a sign that maybe he isn’t really the good guy.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is far less complex and subtle than 300: Rise of an Empire, and as such, is a little harder to find meaning in. It also differs in that Frank Miller clearly had much more influence in the film adaptation. Not only does he once again have a co-directing credit, but he is the only credited writer this time around. However, like Snyder, I think that Miller’s attitude towards women, while clearly outdated and hateful, might be just a bit more complex than he usually lets on. Once again, parts of this film feel like they’re responding to backlash against the first film.

The most obvious example in the final chapter in the film’s anthology, “Nancy’s Last Dance,” in which Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), a passive Damsel in Distress in the last film, is transformed into an unstable, Travis Bickle-esque vigilante. She manages to finally kill off Roarke (Powers Boothe), the big bad of the franchise, which no one ever managed before. It’s not really a good story, Alba just isn’t a strong enough actress to believably pull it off and it renders Hartigan’s (Bruce Willis) sacrifice at the end of the last movie pointless. Killing off Roarke seems like it defeats the point of the Sin City series, where the bad guys always win and the best the good guys can do is ruffle their feathers a bit on the way to the grave. But still, it’s an unexpected place for Miller to take this story.

But once again, Eva Green steals the show; these films live and die on her shoulders. There isn’t really much to unpack with her character compared to 300: Rise of an Empire. Ava Lord (Eva Green) is a pretty standard femme fatale: duplicitous, amoral, using her sexuality to manipulate men into doing her bidding. She does mirror Artemisia a bit, in that both women are sick of living at the whim of men and acquire power through seduction. But Ava has no tragic backstory to motivate her, and in fact, all her claims about being abused are merely lies to garner sympathy (which is incredibly problematic). But I’m a firm believer that even monstrously evil female characters in fiction can be a positive thing if they provide a wider range of roles for actresses; and nobody does bad quite like Eva Green. She dominates this movie so much, it’s no wonder she’s the character the film’s title references. Ava Lord is almost like a slasher villain, in that she’s so much more interesting and fun to watch than her victims; you find yourself rooting for her despite the depths of her evil.

Neither of these films, 300: Rise of an Empire and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, are particularly good, if I’m being honest. The plots are poorly structured, they both feel a little phoned in, the aesthetics have long lost their novelty since the originals came out, and Green is (in both cases) surrounded by castmates who either aren’t nearly on her level, or simply can’t be bothered to put in the same effort. Neither film is feminist, since — with the exception of the last ten minutes of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For — neither have any actual female protagonists, with the women (aside from Nancy) instead serving as adversaries or supporting players to the men. But it’s a testament to Eva Green’s abilities that she steals so many scenes that you forget the film isn’t actually about her.

I like to recognize effort where I see it, and despite all their failings, there is effort in these films. Snyder and Miller are far from my favorite writers, but there is the faintest scent of self-examination in these scripts that is encouraging. Maybe their treatment of female characters will improve further in time; maybe it won’t. In the meantime, we still have Eva Green. And there is never a bad time to celebrate Eva Green.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Eva Green’s Artemisia Disappoints in 300: Rise of an Empire

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Review

Josh J. Bell is a freelance blogger and stage actor from Charleston, South Carolina. He has written for The Escapist and The Agony Booth. Follow him on Twitter @joshjbell.

‘Videodrome’ and the Pornographic Femme Fatale

David Cronenberg’s sci-fi-horror-noir ‘Videodrome’ updated the femme fatale as a response to media-saturated late twentieth-century culture. …The femme fatale is reborn and unleashed to warn of contemporary dangers, including how women’s media representation as sex objects is connected to capitalist propaganda, often with the intent of making a violent agenda seem pleasurable.

This guest post written by Stefan Sereda appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

“The beams become my dream
My dream is on the screen.”
— Blondie, “Fade Away and Radiate”

In Paul Schrader’s 1972 article, “Notes on Film Noir,” the soon-to-be screenwriter-director predicted with accuracy that the noir style would experience a revival in the decade ahead. While the list of New Hollywood noir films is too extensive to list here, encompassing everything from Point Blank (1967) to Blade Runner (1982) and several of Schrader’s own efforts, the Hollywood Renaissance is also known for genre revisionism, and one film noir convention that all but disappeared in the 1970s was the femme fatale.

Critics and audiences argue about whether classical femme fatales were “progressive” representations of American womanhood. From one perspective, fatales such as Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) in The Killers (1946) and Kathie (Jane Greer) in Out of the Past (1947) embodied paranoia about crime, urban decay, family collapse, capitalist competition, and the sexual promiscuity associated with mid-century American womanhood. Of course, the villainous femme fatale archetype gained popularity in a decade wherein men found themselves competing with women in the workplace. On the other hand, femme fatales exercised agency and autonomy, unlike women found in most classical genres and especially in contrast to their domesticated “good girl” foils in noir. Although femme fatales were always destructive manipulators punished for their transgressions, these bad girls were resourceful and ambitious drivers of their own agenda who weaponized their sexuality.*

In the 1970s, film noir’s women were recast as social victims. The most glaring example of the femme fatale’s reformation takes place in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), where Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is a false suspect who only lies to protect her daughter, the offspring of an abusive, incestuous relationship with her father. Deadly women lurked off to horror films such as Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1973) and Carrie (1976). By 1981, the femme fatale came sauntering back wearing ironic virgin white when Kathleen Turner appeared as Matty Walker in Body Heat (1981). Blade Runner (1982) featured two fembots-turned-fatale (and another faux–fatale) whereas David Cronenberg’s sci-fi-horror-noir Videodrome (1983) updated the femme fatale as a response to media-saturated late twentieth-century culture.

A Postmodern Fatale

Andy Warhol hailed Videodrome as “A Clockwork Orange of the 80s.” The Canadian film stars James Wood as Max Wren, a television producer-turned-amateur detective looking for “something that will break through,” until he finds “Videodrome,” a pirate broadcast showing only detached scenes of torture and murder. Max is captivated, but “who would want to watch a scum show like Videodrome?” Max’s casual girlfriend, Nicki Brand, played by Deborah “Debbie” Harry of Blondie fame, is certainly an enthusiast.

Max first meets Nicki on a talk show, where they debate mediated sex and violence. Nicki bemoans contemporary Western existence as “overstimulating times,” but Max challenges her for wearing red (it’s worth noting the famous blonde appears with red hair in Cronenberg’s film), suggesting, “You know what Freud would say about that dress?” Nicki confesses Max is right about her — she also hosts the “Emotional Rescue” show, a talk radio advice program where she blithely addresses her callers as “lover,” signaling her detached post-sexual revolution approach to intercourse and personal attachment, if not her listeners’ attitudes as well. Nicki is a forward first date: the scene cuts to Max’s apartment, where she flippantly inquires, “Got any porno?” Nicki finds a copy of “Videodrome,” which she admits is a turn-on, despite it having no ostensibly sexual content. Max quips, it’s “torture, murder… not exactly sex,” but Nicki answers, “Says who?” She also reveals a history of S&M with “a friend” who she let cut her, and encourages Max to pierce her ear as foreplay while “Videodrome” plays in the background.

It soon becomes apparent Nicki is more sexually versed than Max and beyond his containment, as she progressively seems less naïve than she first appeared in each of her scenes. When Nicki announces she’s going to audition for “Videodrome,” Max warns her “these mondo weirdo video guys… they play rough… rougher than even Nicki Brand wants to play.” Nicki responds with a fatale’s obstinacy, extinguishing a cigarette on her breast. The next time Max sees Nicki, she’s performing on “Videodrome.”

Besides what Freud might call the subconscious “death drive” apparent in her masochism, Nicki shares superficial characteristics with the archetypal fatale. Her makeup and dresses recall the 1940s. As with many fatales, and Harry in real life, Nicki is self-aware of her status as a sex object, to the point where she craves objectification. In a screenplay loaded with double entendres, the name “Nicki” sounds sharp, but also resounding with the false innocence of fatale names like Kathie, Kitty, and Matty. “Brand,” on the other hand, connotes medieval torture and image commodities. Eventually, Max learns a corporate brand, Spectacular Optical, developed “Videodrome” as a mass brainwashing device in preparation for global warfare. Through “Videodrome,” Nicki — or, at the very least, the fatale’s simulacrum — ensnares, tortures, and directs Max.

Moreover, Cronenberg casts Harry to perfection. Before appearing in Videodrome, Harry was already a postmodern shapeshifter, the only woman to be a Playboy Playmate, a punk rock phenom, a pop star, and a household name big enough for The Muppet Show. A New Yorker up on the trends, she was even rapping as early as 1980. Blondie sprinted along a razor line between punk and pop, attracting Andy Warhol’s attention: his likeness of Harry graces the cover of Phaidon’s Andry Warhol Portraits.

Several Blondie songs, some with Harry-penned lyrics, demonstrate what made Harry an ideal choice for the role of a thrill-seeking sex obsessed woman adrift in a consumer-capitalist landscape. On the BDSM-themed debut album opener, “X-Offender,” she plays a sex worker who threatens to “perpetrate love” with her cop crush after he slaps the cuffs on her. “One Way or Another” relates post-sexual revolution mores to consumer excess, with Harry in stalker-mode, ready to pounce on a love-object in the supermarket and discard him thereafter like any other replaceable commodity. Of course, the song title, “Die Young, Stay Pretty,” offers a paradox that parallels Nicki’s early demise and uncanny life thereafter as a televisual seductress. “Fade Away and Radiate” is more specifically about screen performers surviving death as image commodities, with bandmate Chris Stein’s lyrics beating both David Cronenberg and Jean Baudrillard to the punch with regard to commenting on the hyperreal. Despite their sneering punk credentials, several Blondie songs are about gleeful abandonment to the consumer culture landscape of postmodernity — “Platinum Blonde,” “I’m on E,” “Rapture,” and the American Gigolo theme, “Call Me.” “Roll me in designer sheets,” Harry purrs, “I’ll never get enough.”

Pornography and Propaganda

Cronenberg’s techno-horror film is partially a response to porno chic, released a little more than a decade after Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat (1972) broke through to mainstream audiences. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Toronto television station Citytv — the basis for Videodrome’s CIVIC TV — broadcast softcore adult films. Nicki becomes the film’s personification of pornography’s seductive and desensitizing potential.

Unlike the majority of horror films, Cronenberg’s ouevre torments male protagonists (by contrast, horror auteur Dario Argento made the sexist, objectifying remark, “I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”). In Videodrome, much of the terror results from Max discovering his capacity for sadism. Yet the narrative and its iconography also interpret the media as a penetrative force. Max eventually learns “Videodrome” is not fiction but snuff, and that the violent imagery is meant to lubricate the brain to be more receptive to a signal that causes hallucinations. The film refuses to distinguish between these hallucinations and the narrative proper. Soon Max hallucinates/grows “new flesh”: a vaginal wound in his stomach that conspirators use as a tape player to remold him as an assassin. In other words, Videodrome also locates its horror in a man discovering in himself “feminine” traits such as openness and vulnerability for mass media to exploit. Cronenberg, the so-called “Baron of Blood,” likens violent media’s propagandist assault on the senses to rape when various parties forcibly penetrate Max with videotapes.

Nikki’s first appearance on Videodrome marks what Federico Fellini would call the film’s volta: its pivot-point between a narrative “reality” and the surrealist (or hyperreal) events that follow where “reality” becomes an outmoded concept. Soon after McLuhan-esque figure Dr. Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley) finishes telling Max via video, “Television is reality, and reality is less than television,” Nicki is strangling him, and then seducing Max to consummate with his writhing tv set. Later, she appears to him via a VR headpiece, handing him a whip to encourage his penchant for violence in a dreamlike S&M scenario.

Similar to many fatales, Nicki has a “good girl” foil in Brian O’Blivion’s daughter, Bianca O’Blivion (Somja Smits), who runs a “Cathode Ray Mission” to give derelicts their fix of time in front of a television screen. Yet Bianca is as ruthless as Videodrome’s creators when it comes to brainwashing Max, and she turns him against the conspirators who sent him to kill her. Before Bianca sends Max off to kill while reciting the dictum, “Long live the new flesh,” she shows him an image of Nicki being strangled, insisting the “Videodrome” people killed her and used her image to seduce him, not unlike what she herself is doing to Max. It would seem Videodrome’s femme fatale is indeed punished for her transgressions.

Yet after Max believes he has put an end to “Videodrome,” he wanders to an “abandoned vessel.” There, he finds a television showing Nicki’s image. Nicki tells Max that to become “the new flesh” he must leave “the old flesh” and displays a scene of him shooting himself in the head. The film ends with Max saying, “Long live the new flesh,” and a cut to black synced with the sound of a gunshot.

The finale is ambiguous: is Bianca behind Max’s suicide or is “Videodrome,” and how much of what transpired was “real” or hallucinatory? Will Max have a second life preserved as a simulacral image? Regardless, in Cronenberg’s prophetic film, the femme fatale is reborn and unleashed to warn of contemporary dangers, including how women’s media representation as sex objects is connected to capitalist propaganda, often with the intent of making a violent agenda seem pleasurable.

References:

*For a more thorough academic reading of the classical femme fatale and “nurturing woman,” see: Janey Place, “Women in Film Noir,” in Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 2001.

Dr. Stefan Sereda is a writer/researcher with a PhD in English and Film Studies and an MA in Literature with a focus on gender and genre. His publications on American cinema and global media have appeared in A Companion to Martin Scorsese, The Memory Effect, Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, the Directory of World Cinema: Africa, and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature.

Dead Woman Walking: ‘Phoenix’ and the Resurrected Femme Fatale

This is a guest post by Amy Woolsey.

You can scarcely read a review of Phoenix, the latest movie by German director Christian Petzold, without encountering a reference to Vertigo. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic, Phoenix deals with trauma, mistaken identity, and male authority. Stylistically, it leans more toward restraint than melodrama, but it still makes use of double imagery and lush colors (red in particular) to create a surreal atmosphere that drifts through each frame like cabaret music onto nighttime streets.

As in Vertigo, red suggests romance – and danger.

Both films also include a woman who comes back from the dead. In Vertigo, Kim Novak’s Madeleine Elster inflames the passion of Jimmy Stewart’s ex-detective Scottie Ferguson, only to apparently commit suicide halfway through the movie by jumping off a bell tower. Later, the grief-stricken Scottie runs into a woman named Judy Barton who reminds him of Madeleine, and he grows obsessed with molding her into his former lover’s likeness. It turns out that the two women are the same person: Judy had been impersonating Madeleine as part of an elaborate murder scheme. In Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Holocaust survivor who gets surgery to reconstruct her mutilated face. When she reunites with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), he doesn’t recognize her, but noticing a resemblance, he convinces her to masquerade as his “dead” wife so they can collect and split her inheritance.

The similarity isn’t a coincidence. Petzold, along with late screenwriter Harun Farocki, deliberately designed Phoenix as “Vertigo in reverse,” as he explained in an interview with The Film Stage:

“We always thought about the male perspective. We always thought about a man who creates a woman, but we never thought about the perspective of a woman… It was Harun that said we had to change the perspective, so we started thinking about what the male subjectivity had done to Kim Novak, and the studio system — to the actor and to the character in Vertigo. Why all these stories are made by men, huh?”

Far from a cheap gimmick, the point-of-view switch in Phoenix sheds new light on Vertigo and film noir, demonstrating how the genre has evolved since its World War II-era heyday.

As a genre, noir is somewhat nebulous. The term did not enter popular usage until the 1970s, applied in retrospect to a set of films from the 1940s and ‘50s with similar aesthetic and thematic qualities. Some critics don’t consider it a genre at all, but rather a cycle or style. Still, there are a number of conventions commonly associated with noir, from dramatic lighting that emphasizes shadows to a gloomy, even nihilistic mood, not to mention archetypes such as the world-weary detective and, most notably, the femme fatale – in the words of Roger Ebert, a woman who’d “just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.”

Barbara Stanwyck epitomizes the femme fatale as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.

Vertigo was released at the tail end of the classic noir period, but Madeleine Elster still displays the characteristics of a quintessential femme fatale. Slender, white, and platinum-blond, she has a statuesque, if patently artificial beauty, her face blank in a way that conveys mystery rather than vacuity – a discomfiting amalgam of sensuality and reserve. Yet even as she emanates danger, an air of tragedy surrounds her. Madeleine is doomed from the moment she appears onscreen; we’d already heard Gavin, her husband, speculate that she’s being possessed by the ghost of her suicidal great-grandmother, causing her to act “like someone I don’t know.” She may be an agent of death, but she’s also captive of it, perpetually haunted by the specter of her mortality. At one point, she tells Scottie that she feels “as though I’m walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored… and when I come to the end of the corridor, there’s nothing but darkness. And I know when I walk into the darkness that I’ll die.”

The femme fatale, then, embodies noir’s obsession with death – not only its inevitability but also its allure. Unlike the male hero, who strives to defy fate at every turn, the femme fatale is acutely aware of her vulnerability. As scholar Elisabeth Bronfen posits, she “accepts her death as the logical consequence of her insistence on a radical pursuit of personal freedom,” embracing ruin rather than wallowing in denial. It isn’t passivity so much as cynicism; as a woman in a patriarchal society, she’s familiar with the limits of autonomy and has no illusions of grandeur or righteousness. Judy describes her reunion with Scottie as “the moment I dreaded and hoped for,” suggesting she expected and possibly wanted to be found (she did stay in San Francisco and keep several items of clothing she’d worn as Madeleine). She accepts the immorality of her actions and the futility of avoiding retribution.

In theory, Madeleine’s “suicide” should humble Scottie, a reminder of his own vulnerability. But being a noir hero, he shuns enlightenment and clings to the very American, very masculine belief that individuals have absolute mastery over their destinies and the world around them. His efforts to manage Judy stem from not only male hubris, but also an obsessive need to regain a sense of control and repel knowledge of life’s impermanence. Instead of directly confronting his guilt and failure, he deflects blame onto Judy, convinced that by vanquishing her, he can attain redemption and subdue his inner turmoil. While driving back to the bell tower where Madeleine died, Scottie declares, “There is one final thing I have to do and then I’ll be free of the past.” Novak’s dubious expression articulates what her character has no doubt learned: you can’t escape the past.

A more prevalent interpretation of the femme fatale reads her as a male fantasy, a screen onto which spectators can project their erotic desires. Although the narrative often penalizes the hero for succumbing to lust, it implicitly encourages the audience to participate in his temptation, establishing his point-of-view as dominant and rarely developing the woman beyond her surface. As Laura Mulvey’s oft-cited male gaze theory goes, men look, while women are looked at. Is it any wonder that the most memorable image from Vertigo is a shot of Madeleine sitting in front of a painted portrait, her back to the camera? She’s anonymous, part of the surrounding artwork. In this case, the femme fatale doesn’t personify fate but transcends it, her temporary demise and subsequent resurrection reinforcing her abstract nature – her fluid identity, otherworldly glamour, and general elusiveness. She’s not mortal because she’s not real. If that sounds contradictory to the “femme fatale as the essence of mortality” theory, it’s because the femme fatale is a fundamentally contradictory figure: elegant yet violent, volatile yet cunning, egocentric yet self-destructive, catering to female empowerment yet also male pleasure.

Hitchcock frames Madeleine herself as a work of art.

At Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién lamented that noir has shriveled into an empty shell of its former self, tending to appropriate the genre’s most superficial aspects (the violence, the hardboiled dialogue) while neglecting its underlying meaning (the commentary on power, sexuality, deviance, and the American Dream). As a result, the femme fatale has lost much of her potency. Her influence is visible in the demented predators of psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct and the ravishing, albeit ultimately harmless sirens of neo-noirs like L.A. Confidential and Drive, but these characters lack their predecessors’ complexity and subversive edge. Along with David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s twisted romance Gone Girl and Alex Garland’s sleek science-fiction parable Ex Machina, Phoenix takes strides toward salvaging the modern femme fatale, playing with perspective in order to deconstruct gender dynamics and genre tropes.

By situating her at the center of the story, Phoenix grants Nelly an agency Madeleine was denied, turning her into a fully realized individual with her own arc and interior life instead of a mere manifestation of the male hero’s subconscious. Behavior that could come across as illogical and contrived makes sense because Petzold exhibits genuine interest in understanding Nelly and what drives her. Without compromising subtlety, he peels back the layers of his heroine’s enigmatic façade, hinting at her willful nostalgia (she implores the surgeon operating on her face to make her look how she used to) and simultaneous, conflicting urge to find the truth about her husband. Hitchcock, meanwhile, never bothered to devise an explanation for why Madeleine/Judy goes along with Gavin’s plan to murder his wife; she just does what the plot requires of her.

It’s clear right away that Nelly is not a conventional femme fatale. She first appears huddled in the passenger seat of a car, her face covered with bandages and shadows – a stark juxtaposition from Madeleine’s introduction in Vertigo, with Scottie furtively eyeing her emerald-clad figure as Bernard Hermann’s score swells. There’s no attempt to hide Nelly’s fragility; as she wanders through the desolate streets of postwar Berlin, she seems to fade into the background, a ghost haunting ruins. Here, the false death illustrates the effects of trauma, the feeling of having witnessed the end of the world and no longer belonging in the present. Johnny’s manipulation isn’t just inconvenient for Nelly; it’s oppressive, a refusal to acknowledge her personhood. When the bandages come off and she undergoes her transformation, Nelly starts to occupy more of the screen, but that initial sense of alienation and repressed anxiety lingers, etched in Hoss’s searching gaze and tentative walk.

Especially telling is the scene where Nelly enters Johnny’s basement, looking like her old self for the first time. The camera establishes a close-up of her shoes before gliding upward, revealing her body in fragments as she descends the stairs. It’s a familiar technique, used to elicit awe at a female character’s appearance in movies as varied as the Bette Davis romance Now, Voyager and the James Bond-esque spy romp Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In Phoenix, however, the sequence unfolds with an unease that defuses the sensationalism and, as a result, undercuts its effectiveness as a tool of the male gaze. Gone is the mystique that shrouded the femme fatales of classical noir; we’re too conscious of Nelly’s suffering to romanticize her. That’s not to say she is depicted as weak: even at her most ostensibly docile, when Johnny dictates her appearance and movements, Nelly is in command of the narrative. She obtains power not through violence or seduction but knowledge, her willingness to exploit the discrepancy between her real identity and Johnny’s perception of her.

A silent power struggle

Noir is traditionally regarded as the realm of men, with its unsentimental look at crime and corruption. Yet, at its best, the genre has always been as much a portrait of femininity as of masculinity, showing how women navigate and resist the social, moral, and sexual standards imposed on them. After all, one of the reasons for its enduring popularity is its fascination with outsiders, the people lurking in the margins and dark corners of society. Phoenix succeeds where so many have fallen short because it recognizes the value of women’s experiences, presenting a heroine who exists for her sake, not the hero’s, who is neither vilified nor fetishized. At last, the femme fatale manages to transcend the male imagination and become human – free.

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. Since graduating from George Mason University in May, she has started interning at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She spends her free time consuming, discussing, and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. In addition to freelancing at The Week, she wrote about The Bling Ring for Bitch Flicks’ “Unlikable Women” theme week.

Recommended Reading

The Modern Femme Fatale in Nicolas Wending Refn’s Neo-Noir Drive

No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir

Vertigo by Jim Emerson

Hoss Is Boss: The Enigma of Christian Petzold’s Muse by Scott Tobias

Unlikable Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Unlikable Women Theme Week here.

Dolores Jane Umbridge: Page, Screen, and Stage by Jackson Adler

Umbridge works as Undersecretary to Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. Through her position in the patriarchal wizarding government, Umbridge enables job discrimination, segregation, incarceration and harsh sentencing, and physical violence and genocide against marginalized people. She not only politically supports these efforts, but personally enacts violence against marginalized people and their allies, including children.

Never Fear: Unlikable Black Women on Orange Is the New Black and Luther by Rachel Wortherly

When I searched my mental rolodex for Black female characters in film or television who are unlikable my mind continued to circle. I was lost.

“I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way”: The Exceptionally Beautiful Anti-Heroine by Jessica Carbone

And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies.

Evil-Lyn: Fantasy’s Underrated Icon by Robert Aldrich

A character with few rivals and even fewer scruples, Evil-Lyn was arguably one of the better developed villains in the show. And in the annals of females from sci-fi/fantasy, her name should be spoken of in the same breath as Wonder Woman and Princess Leia.

A Fine Frenzy: With an Outspoken Anti-Heroine and a Feminist Lens, Young Adult Is Excellent by Megan Kearns

In this witty, hilarious and bittersweet dramedy, Theron plays Mavis Gary, an author of young adult books living in Minneapolis. Mavis’ life is a hot mess. She’s divorced, drinks her life away and the book series she writes is coming to an end. She was the popular mean girl in high school who escaped to the big city. Mavis returns to her small hometown in Minnesota full of Taco Bells and KFCs intending to reclaim her old glory days and her ex-boyfriend, who’s happily married with a new baby. As she fucks up, she eventually questions what she wants out of life.

Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s VEEP by Rachel Redfern

She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

Bad Girls and (Not-So)-Guilty Pleasures in The Bling Ring by Amy Woolsey

Coppola’s refusal to condemn, explain or apologize for her characters makes for a rather opaque experience. To state the obvious, these are not likable individuals. They exhibit no visible remorse for their crimes, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and think about little besides fashion and D-list celebrities.

Why Maxine from Being John Malkovich Is The Best by Sara Century

Maxine is a perfect character. She stands up for herself, takes no guff off of anyone, and goes for what she wants while issuing remarkable and hilarious ultimatums to those around her. I don’t just like Maxine. I don’t just love Maxine. I am Maxine.

American Mary: In Praise of the Amoral Final Girl by Mychael Blinde

Directed by the Soska sisters, American Mary features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother by Brigit McCone

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Bad Girls Go to Heaven: Hollywood’s Feminist Rebels by Emanuela Betti

Why We Love Janice and Why We Love to Hate Janice by Artemis Linhart

Is Chandler going somewhere, just minding his own business? Chances are that Janice is just around the corner. As Janice once put it, “You seek me out. Something deep in your soul calls out to me like a foghorn. Jaaa-nice. Jaaa-nice.”

Cristina Yang As Feminist by Scarlett Harris

As people, no matter what gender, it is seemingly second nature to want others to like us and to portray our best selves to them. Just look at the ritual of the date or the job interview. That Cristina defied this action (though we have seen her star-struck when meeting surgeons like Tom Evans and Preston Burke) made her not just a feminist character, but a truly human(ist) one.

Triumphing Mad Men’s Peggy Olson by Sarah Smyth

What exactly, then, makes a character “unlikeable”? How can we define this complex term? Broadly, a character is unlikeable when they behave in an amoral or unethical way (which, of course, depends upon our individual morals and ethics), particularly when their motivations are unclear. However, when it comes to female characters, this term seems to diversify and pluralize.

Hate to Love Her: The Lasting Allure of Blair Waldorf by Vanessa Willoughby

In an interview with the New York Times, Gillian Flynn says, “The likability thing, especially in Hollywood, is a constant conversation, and they’re really underrating their audience when they have that conversation. What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations…It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.”

Young Adult‘s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable by Diane Shipley

Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.

Ruthless, Pragmatic Feminism in House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

Top 10 Villainesses Who Deserve Their Own Movies by Amanda Rodriguez

While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley: The Real Power in the Realm by Robert Aldrich

She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with Total Divas darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame by Rachael Johnson

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

King Vidor’s Stella Dallas and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace by Rebecca Willoughby

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing.

Summer: Portrait of a Recognizable Human by Ren Jender

When the family sits down to eat, a platter full of pork chops is placed in the center of the table just as Delphine announces she is a vegetarian. As the others interrogate her (a tedious line of questions familiar to many vegetarians) and one of the men even offers her a plate full of rose petals to feast on, she tries to walk the tightrope many women do–in all sorts of conversations–of not wanting to be seen as a “bother,” but still trying to stick up for her own beliefs.

Anne Boleyn: Queen Bee of The Tudors by Emma Kat Richardson

Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: The Babadook and Mommy by Dierdre Crimmins

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting.

The Real Hated Housewives of TV by Caroline Madden

Naturally, we are all on these anti-heroes’ sides, despite their bad deeds. And Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White all have an antagonist: their wives. They call their husbands out on their lies, moral failings, and oppose them. Thus, they are seen as the nagging wife that everyone hates.

Bad Girls Go to Heaven: Hollywood’s Feminist Rebels

Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) — Gene Tierney in *Leave Her to Heaven* (1945)

This guest post by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Hollywood has produced some of the most memorable bad girls and wicked women on-screen—from silent era’s infamous vamps to film noir’s femme fatales—but bad women do more than just entertain, particularly if we’re talking about the sweepingly emotional and excessively dramatic world of woman’s melodrama. The bad girls I will be discussing are different from the exotic vamps of the ‘20s and the dark femme fatales of film noir; while both these types have their own essence of “badness,” it’s the women in melodramas, specifically the woman’s film sub-genre from the 1930s through the 1950s, where you’ll find some of most unapologetic bad girls in cinema.

I will first explain why the vamp and film noir’s femme fatale are not as interesting, or at least not as groundbreaking compared to the bad woman in woman’s film. Although I’m personally fascinated by both archetypes, the vamp and femme fatale are “creatures of prey,” and that prey is always and inevitably a man. The femme fatale is in essence a selfish creature (this is most evident in the vamp, short for “vampire”) and their function is to extract every penny or remnants of a soul from the male character; in short, the purpose of the femme fatale is to cause a man’s downfall. Nothing wrong with that—but in this perspective, these female archetypes can hardly exist if not in relation to, or in the context of, a male-dominated world.

Olivia de Havilland as the twins in The Dark Mirror (1946) — Olivia de Havilland as the twins in *The Dark Mirror* (1946)

The femme fatale also exists in the woman’s film, but due to the nature of the genre, the archetype is in a very different position. The woman’s film is a sub-genre of the melodrama, and is strictly centered around women. The genre takes place within a woman’s world, and the bad woman exists in relation to other women. A common trope is the “double woman,” which manifest as a look-alike or as a sister/twin: a good example are the twins in A Stolen Life or The Dark Mirror. Whether they’re rivals or friends, sisters or twins, the trope of the “double woman” implies that femininity is split into two sides, and the bad woman embodies the negative side of that spectrum.

While film noir tells us that women are dangerous flytraps, the woman’s films give us insight into how Hollywood spoke to women. Specifically in the case of “double woman” films, in which we are presented with a good character and a bad character, the good one always prevailed. Evil or fallen women were not permitted to win, and by the movie’s end, they were subjected to punishment either through death or abandonment. The woman’s film was a genre that allowed female spectators to live vicariously through a bad woman—Bette Davis, Gene Tierney—but by the end, female audiences were taught that being bad doesn’t pay. The path of the good woman was the most prosperous, and only those who submit and surrender get the man. Basically, the “negative” side of femininity was associated with women who did not submit or conform, and Hollywood eagerly discouraged any identification with them.

I am always disappointed and sad when the bad woman, who I usually root for, is finally subdued or destroyed. Yet, the act of being punished brings up a lot of questions: why is she punished, and what for? Not all bad women were murderers, criminals—and most often, they’re biggest fault was just stubbornness.

Jeanine Basinger describes woman’s films as a genre of limitations: the typical environments that these women inhabit are department stores, prisons, but most often these films take place in the home. Although the women may inhabit a woman’s world, they were restricted on every side. Their personality, their environment, and their success are all dictated by a male-governed ideology: women’s place is in the home, and their only career is love and marriage. The bad woman breaks out of these imposed limit: Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven plays Ellen Berent—a sporty, outdoors type—completely defying the convention of a woman relegated to a domestic setting; Dorothy Malone plays Marylee, a promiscuous heiress in Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind, dressed in hot pink and flirting with the confidence of a playboy. These characters are punished because according to a male-governed system they go against what is deemed “acceptable” in a woman: they’re aggressive, stubborn, and active (compared to the good girls—Ellen’s sister, Marylee’s romantic rival—who are passive, submissive, and compliant).

Dorothy Malone as Marylee in Written on the Wind (1956) — Dorothy Malone as Marylee in *Written on the Wind* (1956)

Another important aspect of these bad women is the fact that men cannot understand them, which makes them harder to pin down and subdue. It’s not uncommon to see the inclusion of psychoanalysis in woman’s films, with characters described as “mad” or “hysterical.” To pin down unexplainable behavior is an attempt to subdue and control it: we see this in Leave Her to Heaven, in which Ellen’s doctor attempts to understand her lack of maternal instincts; in Cat People, Irena’s aggressive sexuality is described as a supernatural occurrence. The medical gaze, in which a doctor attempts to ascribe a woman’s bad or unusual behavior as a result of mental illness, is very close to the idea of the male gaze. When a woman defies the male gaze, the medical gaze may attempt to explain and understand her, in an effort to “fix” her. As much as on-screen psychiatrists and analysts try to “help” the women, they always seem to fail, never able to pin-point why a woman would want to live outside a male-dominated system. So wanting to go horseback riding instead of cooking dinner meant the woman was evil. But was she, really? Or maybe she was just a woman who somehow managed to dodge every attempt at being domesticated.

Finally, bad girls in woman’s film are similar to femme fatales in some ways: they enjoy men, want men—but don’t really need men. Men often play marginal roles in the woman’s film, usually a romantic interest who is too often overwhelmed by the women’s personalities, and often fail to control the woman. In Jezebel, Bette Davis calls off her engagement numerous time, and always due to the fact that she’s too stubborn to submit to her fiancé’s idea of an “acceptable” idea of femininity. Jezebel, and Ellen, and Marylee are full-flesh women, and their existence is not defined by men—instead, their biggest conflict lies between maintaining their identity or giving it up for their man.

The “bad girl” in woman’s film is not so much a wicked or evil person, but simply a woman who unapologetically inhabits her world, and the belief that she is ruler of that world is her biggest crime. In the end, her defeat is really a victory: she cannot exist in a world in which the rules are set by men. Her final demise leaves the men bitter, because they could never control the bad woman, and she never gave them the chance.

Emanuela Betti is a part-time writer, occasional astrologer, neurotic pessimist by day and ball-breaking feminist by night. She miraculously graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and writes about music and movies on her blog.

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her’: Dude, the Internet’s Just Not That Into You

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her,’ by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

A Step Forwards Or Stepfordwards? — A Step Forward Or Stepfordward?

Written by Brigit McCone.

There are enough similarities between the new release Ex_Machina and Spike Jonze’s 2013′ Oscar-winner Her to herald the birth of a minor genre, which I hereby dub “dude, the Internet’s just not that into you.” It bears some relation to the “female autonomy horror” genre of films like Lucy and Gone Girl, in which a woman’s being inscrutable, uncontrollable and smarter than the hero is associated with her being threatening, coldly emotionless, violent and/or Scarlett Johansson. It bears some relation to the “dude, porn and/or Scarlett Johansson’s just not that into you” romcom of Don Jon. It might even be connected with the “dude, Scarlett Johansson’s cold inscrutability is becoming autonomous, kill her with fire” genre of Under the Skin. There’s a trend here, is what I’m saying. Compare 1975 feminist classic The Stepford Wives, with its radical concept that a woman being compliant and robotic was a creepy thing. Surely, moving from a horror of female robots to a horror of female autonomy is a step backward for womankind? So why do these films, Ex Machina and Her, feel like a step forward? The answer is their honesty about male psychology.

The men of The Stepford Wives are classic straw chauvinists (or “chauvinazis”). Any man would feel good about his own tolerance for women after watching that film. That might be excused if the film were exaggerating the chauvinazis’ evil to express female perceptions of male mastery. It is not. The Stepford Wives was written by Ira Levin and William Goldman, and directed by Bryan Forbes. Not a vagina among the lot of them. It condemns a crowd of chauvinazis, whose perspective the film’s male authors wish to separate themselves from, in the name of a female perspective that they also don’t share. Ex Machina and Her, by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

It would be nice if the insecurities of an archetypal “nagging wife” got the same sensitive exploration as those of Her‘s Theodore and Ex Machina‘s Caleb, because they are rooted in the same universal dilemma: it is impossible for someone to choose to be with you, without having power to leave you; it is impossible to love another without giving them power to hurt you. Olivia Wilde’s blind date does express this insecurity in Her, but far less sympathetically than the hero. Theodore’s friend Amy, however, is allowed to express frustration with her husband’s controlling behaviour, guilt and relief over their separation, without judgement, while Theodore builds empathy by playing her sarcastic “Perfect Mom” simulations. Jonze’s male feminist cred is solid. He hilariously embodies macho peer pressure as a squeaky, shrunken, foul-mouthed video-game character, while praising the hero’s femininity is a compliment. Theodore’s job, “beautifulhandwrittenletters.com”, reminds us that issues of emotional authenticity are a timeless human dilemma; Theodore is cyber-Cyrano de Bergerac. Here’s why the men of The Stepford Wives are laughably phony straw chauvinists: they are emotionally unrecognizable in their satisfaction with cold simulations of affection. From limitless porn to the interactivity of cam girls, from impossible hentai scenarios to Craigslist Casual Encounters, the internet offers men everything except emotional authenticity, yet most crave more than such cyber-Stepford. Society’s irrational hostility to porn performers stems partly from the rage of being given what we asked for, instead of what we wanted. Her and Ex Machina are a step forward, not Stepfordward, because they acknowledge that female autonomy is essential to male romantic satisfaction. At the same time, they recognize this as the source of its terror. This is not the (female-authored) “female autonomy horror” of Gone Girl, so much as “male vulnerability horror.”

The plot of Ex Machina is simple enough: young, ambitious programmer Caleb is summoned to eccentric genius Nathan’s isolated mansion, where Nathan has been designing a female cyborg, called AVA, whose artificial intelligence derives from the input of his massively successful social network (Google-meets-Facebook, basically). Caleb’s job is to test AVA, to see if she is actually conscious or only a robotic simulation of thought and feeling. In the process, he finds himself attracted to her. There’s a lot going on beneath this simple set-up, from the philosophy of consciousness to the privacy issues raised by social media, but writer-director Alex Garland’s decision to embody the Internet as an attractive woman puts the theme of cyber-Stepford front and centre.

Oscar Isaac’s deliciously douchey, scene-stealing Nathan regards the creation of autonomous, thinking life as an act of conquest, part of the empowerment fantasy of godhood expressed by his chronic urge to control his surroundings. To achieve his ultimate fantasy, Nathan must create a woman who can respond to him, interact and be amusingly unpredictable, without unpredictably escaping Nathan’s control. Gradually, we learn that Caleb has been summoned to interrogate AVA because she refuses to cooperate with Nathan. AVA, like all her previous prototypes, loathes Nathan for imprisoning her. Nathan and his prototypes represent the escalating spirals of abusive relationships; the insecurity that drives the abuser to control their victim also deprives that victim of the freedom to demonstrate voluntary attraction. The abuser’s inability to confirm attraction intensifies their insecurities, while rendering them ever less attractive by their increasingly controlling behaviour. Rinse and repeat. In Ex Machina, Nathan’s controlling psychology breeds a twisted, claustrophobic, and darkly fascinating dynamic.

Caleb, by contrast, is an essentially decent guy, achingly akin (or akin in his aching) to Her‘s Theodore. Domhnall Gleeson is impressive in a demanding role, where the audience’s attention is repeatedly drawn to Caleb’s involuntary microexpressions as indicators of his sincere feelings, which AVA can read like a lie detector. Because Gleeson succeeds in performing social awkwardness, defensiveness, loneliness and longing with a restraint that reads as sincere, right down to his microexpressions, the film pulls off its shift from examining AVA’s inner life to exploring Caleb’s. Alicia Vikander’s skilled performance as AVA is plausibly attractive in its doe-eyed warmth, but admirably nails “uncanny valley” by becoming creepier the closer Vikander gets to being visually human. This is an impressive feat when your performer actually is a human – by the time Vikander stands fully fleshed before a mirror, she is as indefinably skin-crawling as Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin.

Because our Caleb is a good guy, he cannot love AVA without striving to release her, even at the potential cost of a Terminator/Matrix–style machine apocalypse. But the film is smart enough to question whether Caleb wants to release AVA for her own sake, or as part of his rescuer fantasy that requires her to reward him sexually and romantically. When boss Nathan reveals, apparently casually, that AVA is designed to be penetrable and experience pleasurable stimulation in sex, Caleb and the audience are primed for a sexual climax, either Blade Runner conquest (the scene where Caleb slices his arm to check he’s human nods to Decker-is-a-replicant conspiracy theories) or Fifth Element awakening. After all, expecting a sexual reward for risking the safety of the world is not incompatible with Hollywood’s definition of a Nice Guy, but inseparable from it.

Indie Average Joe and the Erection of Doom

Ex Machina is an effectively eerie and tense psychological thriller, sustained by a trio of excellent performances. If you want to check it out, I highly recommend doing so before reading this MASSIVE SPOILER.

Still here? At the film’s climax, AVA escapes, is forced to kill Nathan for her own survival and locks Caleb in her former prison before walking out into the world. She has taken no visible pleasure in killing Nathan or imprisoning Caleb, but blossoms into a smile when she sees the outdoors for the first time. She is frightening to us, not because she has revealed sadistic cruelty, but because she has revealed herself to be unknowable. This ending reveals the paradox of power at the heart of abusive relationships: the abuser is made predictable by the self-exposure of abusive behavior, while the abused becomes conversely less predictable. Because her behavior was constrained by the need to manipulate her abusers to survive, nothing that AVA did reflected her true feelings. It is Nathan’s efforts to protect himself that have revealed him in all his (douchey) human frailty, creating an unknowable god in AVA that rises triumphant from his machinations.

As Nathan tells Caleb, while they test AVA for sincere feeling, there remains that elusive third option: she may be capable of love, but still choosing to simulate her love for Caleb. Ex Machina‘s ending thus reveals nothing about whether AVA is capable of empathy, nothing about whether she is conscious or simulating symptoms of consciousness with predictive algorithms, nothing about whether she is going to render humanity obsolete with an army of robot replicants or just wander off to look at a tree somewhere. An hour of witnessing abusive tests and invasive scrutiny has taught the audience (and her captors) absolutely squat about this woman/cyborg’s subjectivity but, in releasing AVA, we make our first genuine discovery: she is utterly uninterested in Caleb. She does not care whether he lives, but is equally uninterested in torturing him or watching him die. She has no interest in talking to him, when not forced to do so for her liberation. Despite her pleasure-programmed cyber-vagina, she has no interest in awakening her humanity through sexual exploration with Caleb. There is really no possible way that she could demonstrate less interest in our sensitive hero. His desire for her makes him vulnerable. Her indifference makes her free. Autonomy is a bitch.

In contrast to the unknowable AVA, our hero Caleb has revealed himself to be utterly predictable and transparent. Like the Jackson Pollock that hangs symbolically in Nathan’s office, his actions have been shaped by patterns below the level of his conscious intent, more visible to onlookers than to himself. His attraction to AVA could be engineered by Nathan, from a compilation of Caleb’s porn searches. His need to rescue AVA is a hardwired response of his romantic drive. Would Caleb take such risks to release AVA if he were not attracted to her? If he would not, then isn’t it justice that he should take her place because she is not attracted to him? If she doesn’t tip off rescuers before Caleb starves to death, his punishment will surely be excessive. But if we are seduced by Gleeson’s vulnerability into believing that AVA owes him a romantic reward for her basic freedom, or we believe that the operating system Samantha is at fault for out-evolving Her‘s Theodore, we become cyber-misogynists.

The viewer’s instinctive bias toward the human hero, over the unknowable robot perspective, mirrors the sexist bias of those men who view women as fundamentally alien, even while craving their approval. The cool thing about Her is that it explores how an intelligent being can become elusive and emotionally estranged without trickery or deliberate cruelty, but the cool thing about Ex Machina is that it recognizes that there is no possible way to interrogate and control an intelligent being without becoming their abuser. Rooted in defensive emotional vulnerability, these films are frighteningly insidious, familiar and relatable, when compared to the reassuringly inhuman chauvinazism of Stepford. Digging deep, directors Alex Garland and Spike Jonze have struck the raw nerve from which controlling impulses flow. The horror was human all along.

Female autonomy: it's like kicking a puppy — Female autonomy: it’s like kicking a puppy

Brigit McCone struggles with asserting feminist autonomy when given the puppy eyes, writes and directs short films and radio dramas.

The Modern Femme Fatale in Nicolas Wending Refn’s Neo-Noir ‘Drive’

Irene comes across as sexually inhibited in her relationship with Driver because she knows that her husband will soon return home from prison. However, from the moment that she meets Driver, she relies on him for help.

The Modern Femme Fatale Irene (Carey Mulligan)

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

The alluring femme fatale always played an important part in our Western cinematic history. The archetype of the errant woman was present ever since Theda Bara graced the screen in the silent film era of the 1920s. Nevertheless, it was film noir that polished the archetype. The highly stylized and suspenseful film genre formed the basis of the Hollywood creation of the femme fatales in the 1940s and 1950s. The genre broke the conventional stereotypes of one-dimensional, insecure and dependent women. Instead women were vivacious, captivating, seductive female characters who owned the screen while sashaying through their own created webs of deceit and betrayal (although some would say they were manipulative and cold-blooded with an sexual self-serving attitude). The archetype changed over time, which is intertwined with the modernization of the film industry. The femme fatale is in its essence a tool to help us understand the limits of social and cultural roles surrounding women. The neo-noir Drive (2011) is an homage to the old-fashioned art form of escapism.

It took more than six years before Drive was shot. The film adaptation of the novel by James Sallis initially appeared to be heading in the same direction as the popcorn flick The Fast and the Furious. Hugh Jackman and director Neil Marshall (Doomsday, Centurion) were first attached to the project. When Gosling took the place of Jackman, he specifically asked for director Nicolas Winding Refn. The quirky Danish director debuted with the raw thriller Pusher, and followed it with Bronson with Tom Hardy as lead about Britain’s most violent prisoner and he also directed Valhalla Rising, a Viking movie filled with brutal fights, but ends in silent contemplation. Winding Refn is an unpredictable director with his own peculiar visual style. The film has similarities with an ’80s classic. In 1978, Walter Hill created The Driver with Ryan O’Neal as nameless hero. Similar to the main character in Drive, we will never know his name. They do share a profession: if somewhere in the city a robbery is committed, they are the cold-blooded drivers of the getaway car. In 2011, Winding Refn won the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for Drive.

Drive centers around Ryan Gosling as a handsome loner, silent, gentle and a master on the road. He works in the garage of Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who gives him criminal jobs and occasionally work as a stunt driver on Hollywood film sets. Shannon wants his most talented driver to start a new career in the professional racing circuit and concludes a deal with two mafia business partners, Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman). The young driver, meanwhile, gets acquainted with his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son, Benicio. Irene immediately falls for his charm. Only the scorpion on the back of his jacket recalls the dark aspects of his existence. And that one, beautiful, ominous shot where we see him on a film set as a stand-in with a latex mask over his head.

Irene (Carey Mulligan) and Driver (Ryan Gosling)

Is Irene the modern femme fatale in Drive? One of the interesting aspects of the character is that she’s played by Mulligan. The original character in the script was an Hispanic woman named Irina. In a conversation with Interview Magazine, Winding Refn bluntly states that he gave Carey Mulligan the part because she “seemed pure,” like someone he wanted to protect. Apparently he couldn’t imagine a Latina actress in the part. He picked Mulligan specifically because she fits the mold of the damsel in distress that in Hollywood is synonymous with white.

Irene is described as a beautiful and seductive woman but she’s not a direct danger to Driver. We can see that there’s tension between Driver and Irene, but Irene is more insecure than hyperaware of her sexuality. Irene is the object of sexual desire of Driver and because he becomes intrigued by her, he will do anything to help her. The classic femme fatale is often seen as sexually uninhibited, independent, and ambitious. Irene comes across as sexually inhibited in her relationship with Driver because she knows that her husband will soon return home from prison. However, from the moment that she meets Driver, she relies on him for help.

Irene’s husband asks Driver for help when he comes back from prison because of an outstanding debt. Driver wants to protect Irene and as a result he becomes entangled in a criminal job to raise the money, and that’s eventually his downfall. Irene never explicitly asked Driver for help. Instead of the so-called “evil seductress who tempts the man and brings about his destruction,” Irene seems more a passive, innocent woman who indirectly without intent, will perish the man.

Irene seems to be a combination of the femme fatale and the femme attrapée. The femme attrapée is, according to Janey Place in “Women in Film Noir,” a woman who “offers the possibility of integration for the alienated, lost man into the stable world of secure values, roles and identities. She gives love, understanding (or at least forgiveness), asks very little in return (just that he come back to her) and is generally visually passive and static.”

Driver is here the alienated, lost man and Irene gives him love and understanding. Both characters seem lonely and find solace in their relationship. Irene comes across as a passive, brave, and sweet woman but functions in the story as a femme fatale. Her innocence ensures that Driver makes the wrong choices. In film noir, the male protagonist would make the wrong choices because the femme fatale has instigated him with her sexuality, but Drive allows Driver to make these choices to save Irene. Drive has an open ending so the future of Driver remains unclear.

The femme fatale in the modern neo-noir films from the 1960s, 1970s and onward transformed into a more passive role, rather than active and manipulative. We see elements of Irene herein. Irene doesn’t fit the classic description of the femme fatale. She’s no Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck or even a Sharon Stone. It’s not the loss of control by a seductive woman that resulted in the downfall of Driver but instead taking the rains, coercion and protective instinct. The archetype will pop up in films in years to come since it always captures our imagination.

The tight script was penned down by the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini. Amini was hesitant at first because of the non-linear structure of the novel but he definitely made the transition from page to screen work. Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel neatly used wide-angle lenses instead of handheld camerawork to capture Winding Refn’s visual style. The film was shot digitally and Winding Refn was able to capture evocative, intense images of Los Angeles. The film has a 1980s atmosphere which comes true via the cars, music, clothes, but especially with the architecture in downtown Los Angeles. It all reflects the art house approach of Winding Refn.

Wending Refn follows the beat of his own drum. As a result, Drive isn’t your run of the mill action flick. The emphasis in Drive lies first and foremost on the characters, accompanied by the speed, and the wonderful soundtrack. Winding Refn managed to create an enigmatic film that engages, shocks, and surprises–old fashioned escapism and inescapable at once.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Drive and the Need to Identify the Virgin or Whore in the Passenger Seat, by Leigh Kolb

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe6eOqheva8″]

Giselle Defares comments on film, fashion (law) and American pop culture. See her blog here.

Male Mask, Female Voice: The Noir of Ida Lupino

Lupino then struck out from the studio system to direct three noirs of her own: ‘Outrage,’ ‘The Hitch-Hiker,’ and ‘The Bigamist,’ the only classic noirs made by a female auteur. Each uses a different strategy to challenge the empathy gap between spectators and female characters, and to subvert the femme-fatale trope.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

The IMDb page of Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005) offers the following summary: “at a turning point in his life, a former tennis pro falls for a femme-fatale type.” The plot of Match Point: Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ former tennis pro aggressively pursues Scarlett Johansson’s sexually confident actress, begins an affair that only she expresses guilt over (though she is single, breaking up with her fiancé after her first hook-up with Meyers, while he remains engaged), then he plans and executes the cold-blooded murder of Johansson to cover his adultery. In other words, Meyers plays a classic, manipulative “psycho killer bitch” in all but gender.

The fact that Johansson’s character is nevertheless judged as a “femme-fatale type” and Meyers’ character excused as being “at a turning point in his life,” points to the real underpinnings of the femme-fatale: the assumption that female sex appeal is responsible for male violence. Her manipulative behavior may confirm the femme-fatale’s evil, but her responsibility for male violence is the core of her role, rooted in a victim-blaming lack of empathy for women. If that remains true even in 2005, it was certainly true of the ’40s and ’50s heyday of film noir.

Few people understood the logic of the femme-fatale better than Ida Lupino. Her looks, confidence and intelligence saw her typecast as a seductive “vamp” from the age of 14. Lupino became one of the iconic femme-fatales of the 1940s, breaking out as crazed villainess of They Drive By Night, followed by genre classics High Sierra, The Hard Way, and Road House. Lupino then struck out from the studio system to direct three noirs of her own: Outrage, The Hitch-Hiker, and The Bigamist, the only classic noirs made by a female auteur. Each uses a different strategy to challenge the empathy gap between spectators and female characters, and to subvert the femme-fatale trope.

Rape Culture As Ultimate Noir: Outrage

The first cinematic examination of what feminists now call “‘rape culture,” 1950’s Outrage introduces Ann Walton (Mala Powers), a character whose wholesomeness is emphasized from the film’s start. She is liked by co-workers and says of her fiancé, “I found the right one,” showcasing her mental monogamy. In a tense, expressionist sequence of shadowy yards and deserted streets, Ann is stalked by a sexual predator and caught when she swoons; it is her traditional femininity that makes her vulnerable, not transgression. Ann is constantly watched: chatting to her fiancé, she is smirked at by an old lady; when talking with a co-worker, the clenching hands of her future attacker are visible in the foreground, making the audience uncomfortably aware that we share his gaze. We, too, will be asked to watch and judge Ann throughout the film.

This surveillance of chivalry offers Ann no protection. As her future attacker insistently flirts with her, to her visible discomfort, bystanders are blank-faced and avoid eye contact. As a vulnerable woman alone at night, taxis refuse to stop for her. As her attacker closes in to rape her, the camera pulls back to a neighbor firmly shutting his window. After the rape, we are shown the averted eyes of former friends and the everyday intrusions of men, who casually grab her flinching shoulder or invade her space, an entitlement to the female body that is weaponized by Ann’s trauma. When Ann is finally triggered into striking a blow, she does not get revenge against her rapist, but attacks a random stranger who is stroking her hair and pestering her for a kiss. This sends a clear message that such pushy violations of a woman’s boundaries collectively create a triggering environment that normalizes rape. The conventions of noir, which condition the audience to accept that society is hostile and unjustly disbelieving the protagonist, are used by Lupino to shape the audience’s interpretation of rape culture.

Ann finally finds redemption through the friendship and support of Rev. Bruce Ferguson. It is visiting him alone at his house at night, and driving with him into the countryside unchaperoned, that allows him to counsel her. The fact that she is healed by ignoring society’s proprieties, and victimized when swooning in conventional feminine panic, demonstrates the irrelevance of woman’s transgressions to man’s actions. Rev. Bruce’s authority as man and as cleric is invoked to justify Ann. In the film’s climactic trial of Ann for attacking the harassing flirt, the authority of the legal system is used to hold male sexual aggression responsible for female violence, neatly reversing the “femme-fatale” formula. Rev. Bruce’s mansplaining authority presents his blistering condemnation of chivalry’s failures as an act of chivalry itself: his courtroom speech establishes rape as an epidemic social problem, “a shameful blot on our towns and cities,” excuses Ann’s actions (Rhys Meyers’ tennis coach might have been “at a turning point in his life” when he gunned down Johansson’s “femme-fatale type,” but Ann had “been suffering in her mind a long time” when she clobbered a flirt with a wrench), and indicts society for the assault – “it’s our fault, all of us” – appealing to the judge “as a man.” Of course, Rev. Bruce is not speaking “as a man” at all, but “as Ida Lupino.” Society’s dismissing of woman’s testimony as “hysterical” required Lupino to dress female perspective in a male mask for it to be heard.

Outrage is fascinating as a direct appeal from the suppressed female voice. It exposes the hypocritical underbelly of traditional chivalry, and its human cost, but it is not a fully satisfying drama. The very victim-blaming that Lupino condemns, forces her heroine into one-note wholesomeness to dodge femme-fatality. Ann often irritates viewers with her “damsel-in-distress” manner, but this only highlights how inhuman a woman had to be, to be chivalry’s “justified” victim. At the same time, the need for Rev. Bruce to project authority makes his character smug to the point of creepiness. In her next film, The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino would banish women from the screen entirely and reveal herself capable of sharp psychological subtlety.

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Why Didn’t They Just Leave Him? The Hitch-Hiker

1953’s The Hitch-Hiker opens with a bold declaration: “what you will see in the next seventy minutes could have happened to you.” We hear a woman’s scream and gunshots. A lady’s purse falls to the floor at the attacker’s feet. This opening scene establishes the villain as a killer of women, but his victim is not shown. To give her any character would be to expose that character to scrutiny. Why was she traveling alone? Why would she pick up a hitch-hiker? Why didn’t she just leave him? To convince the audience that it “could have happened to them,” the faceless woman must be replaced by all-American Roy and Gilbert, on their manly hunting trip. A man can be everyman; a woman represents only herself. Roy and Gilbert, then, must walk in the shoes of the female victim; we will experience her terror through their male masks. The film is a master class in suspense and claustrophobia, making maximal use of both cramped car and empty Mexican desert. The hitch-hiker has one eye permanently opened, so the captives can’t tell whether he is asleep or watching, piling on the paranoia as the pair squirm under his peering panopticon, until they internalize his surveillance. Roy and Gilbert are as minutely scrutinized by the hitch-hiker as Outrage‘s Ann is by society.

One of the film’s harsher comments on IMDb complains that “the two captive men are presented with innumerable opportunities to outsmart or overpower their captor, but fail to do so out of apparent cowardice or stupidity,” which actually points to the film’s central strength. Under crushing pressure, the group evolves the psychological dynamic of an abusive family. The captives’ loyalty to each other becomes an exploitable weakness that prevents them from fleeing. Roy and Gilbert gradually grow complicit in the hitch-hiker’s schemes, as they adapt to his demands and learn to anticipate and appease his rages. They miss opportunities to appeal for outside help, as they are blackmailed into silence. The Hitch-Hiker is one of the rare films that realistically captures the psychology of intimidation, letting the audience witness the group’s toxic dynamic develop over time. The intimate violence of emotional abuse emerges as an ideal subject for noir. George Cukor’s Gaslight is a strong example, but Lupino’s choice of protagonists, all-American hunting buddies, explores the dynamics of abuse as universal human psychology rather than female vulnerability. In her next film, The Bigamist, she would exploit the audience’s higher tolerance for flawed and complex male protagonists, to promote empathy for complex women.

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Woman Humanizes Man Humanizes Woman: The Bigamist

On the surface, 1953’s The Bigamist presents a classic narrative of infidelity: Harry is driven, by the neglect of his careerist wife Eve, into an affair with a brassy, smart-mouthed broad, Phyllis. But Lupino’s film humanizes the stereotypes into sympathetic individuals. In the process, she demonstrates that the ideology of male unfaithfulness depends on the dehumanizing of women to make them disposable; it must be justified either by condemning the wife as cold, castrating harpy, or by dismissing the mistress as calculating femme-fatale. The climactic trial of the bigamist becomes a trial of society, just like that of Lupino’s Outrage. In the authoritative voice of the male judge, the film spells out the irony that it is no crime to commit adultery, but a crime to recognize and protect both women by marriage.

Like its hero, the film refuses to demonize either woman or to imply that they deserve to be abandoned. Joan Fontaine’s Eve is a workaholic, but she is also loving and supportive. Ida Lupino’s Phyllis reveals layers of loneliness and fragility under her brash, defensive surface. She is not trying to trap Harry, giving him the opportunity to leave even after she falls pregnant. Refreshingly, the women do not turn on each other when the bigamy is revealed, but turn their looks of hurt onto Harry at his trial. The script was written by Collier Young, Lupino’s ex-husband and professional collaborator, who was married to Fontaine at the time of shooting. Lupino’s collaboration with Fontaine, and her sympathetic portrayal of Fontaine’s Eve, is thus an act of solidarity that puts its money where its mouth is, radically rejecting cat-fight logic between women who have shared a man.

Ida Lupino exploits the audience’s willingness to identify with a male protagonist, to encourage them to see both women from the hero’s sympathetic viewpoint. Lupino herself takes the role of a woman pregnant from unmarried sex, then uses the hero’s voiceover to empathize with her character and avoid moral judgment; yet another male mask for the defense of female worth. Defying double standards, Harry takes full responsibility for his choice to sleep with Phyllis, marrying her to support their child. He is flawed, against the standard of a fully committed husband, but noble when compared with the casual exploitation of women tolerated by Lupino’s society. The result is a morally complex and ambiguous portrait of polyamory, which affirms that no human is disposable and that no “femme-fatale” is without her humanity.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eUmFS7ww5s”]

Ida Lupino’s career as director is an intriguing example of an actress seizing power to rebut the misogynist traditions of her own genre. In the process, she reveals noir’s natural potential to explore female psychology and experience. When her company, “The Filmmakers,” folded, she went on to be a prolific director in television, then directed 1966’s The Trouble With Angels, a sympathetic portrait of a Catholic convent school. As the only female director working in ’50s Hollywood, and as a striking artist in her own right, Ida Lupino deserves a fresh look.

Brigit McCone over-identifies with Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She writes short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns out of the corner of her mouth.

The Female Archetypes Through the Lens of Roberto Rossellini

The character development of Pina and Marina used by Rossellini shows the influence of the war on Italian life and femininity. The suffering women are the epitome of the country at war.

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.

Italian neorealism. Who would have thought that a genre that existed for a short period of time–1944 to 1952 to be precise–could have such a significant influence in the world’s cinematic history? The quintessential works of the Italian neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica (Ladri di biciclette), Luchino Visconti (La Terra Trema, Ossessione) and Roberto Rossellini (Roma, città aperta) are now anchored in our cultural lexicon. The genre has influenced the work of famed directors such as Truffaut, Antonioni and Godard. After all, didn’t Jean-Luc Godard state “All roads lead to Rome, Open City”?

Roma, città aperta, the first part of Rossellini’s neorealistic trilogy, is often cited as the prime example of the neorealist genre. In ravaged Rome of 1945, recovering from Nazism and fascist oppression, Rossellini formed a team with Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei to create two documentaries. Amidei and Fellini encouraged Rossellini to combine the scripts to create realistic fiction. The film was shot on location in Rome on a shoestring budget (mustered with many loans). Rossellini used parts of a 35 millimeter film and the scenes were silently shot–Renzo Rossellini would later post-synchronize the sound. Voilá, Roma, città aperta was born.

The neorealist movement arose as a reaction against the glamorous melodramas that had previously dominated the Italian film industry under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. The fascist Mussolini used cinema as a place where the Italian citizen could dream of the lush–unattainable–images and temporarily forget their own harsh reality a.k.a cinema of distraction.

The neorealist directors sought out to present a degree of unfettered realism that wasn’t presented on the Italian silver screen. The films addressed social problems such as the ravages of war, crime, unemployment, and poverty. The sense of immediacy throughout the film–scenes shot in locations where eight months before the city was occupied by the Nazis–had no correlation with any other Italian film produced in the 40s. Upon its release, Roma, città aperta, was received with mixed reactions in Italy. Luckily the rest of the world was transfixed by this form of new realism. The film won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. Fellini, Rossellini, and Amidei were nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Roma, città aperta centers around the plight of the core members of the Italian resistance against the occupational Nazi government. We follow Giorgio Manfredi also known as Luigi Ferraris (Marcello Pagliero), a communist and leader in the resistance who’s wanted by the Nazis. His friend and underground Communist newspaper printer Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet); his fiancée, the widow Pina (Anna Magnani); and the priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi). The trio will help Manfredi get a new identity. Pina’s son, the young Marcello, has been active in the resistance against the Nazis. In the tumultuous events that follow, Francesco is arrested but later manages to escape. While Manfredi gets betrayed by his lover, femme fatale pur sang, Marina (Maria Michi).

Most research on the film–see for example the work of David Forgacs, Peter Brunette, Tag Gallagher–is focused on the politics of filming, the catholic church, or other neo-realist features. Not much is written on the archetypical roles of the women in this film (bar the work of Marcia Landy. The character development of Pina and Marina used by Rossellini shows the influence of the war on Italian life and femininity. The suffering women are the epitome of the country at war.

Fascism encouraged the rise of the so called New Italian Women (Nuova Italiana). During Mussolini’s reign, Italian women struggled with the dilemma of the lure of modernity versus the rut of tradition. Though their freedom was curbed: no voting rights for women, no female participation in the labor market, and a ban on abortion. The role of the women herein was in essence purely to bring forth children. These contradictions were emphasized by the gap that existed between the traditional Italian society of the First World War and the division of modernity that fascism entailed. In 1933, Mussolini’s stated, “ Woman must obey… My idea of her role in the State is in opposition to all feminism. Naturally she shouldn’t be a slave, but if I conceded her to vote, I’d be laughed at. In our State, she must not count.” Right.

In Roma, città aperta we are introduced to two archetypes. First, the headstrong Pina, the rock who supports her husband, yet is allowed to be vulnerable. Then there’s Marina, the “weak” and venal woman who will succumb to all her desires. This dichotomy between Pina and Marina is the classic example of the Madonna-whore complex. Marina is presented as the complete opposite of Pina. Pina can be seen as the new Italian woman. Her whole look and attitude throughout the film is that of an ordinary, disheveled woman. She almost seems stripped of her “femininity.” This is a stark contrast with Marina, who works as a showgirl and enjoys her silk stockings, fur coats, and cigarettes – all the finer things in life. Marina seems like the new embodiment of the earlier femme fatales that reigned in the Fascist cinema–women who lived by no discernible laws and destroyed men who crossed their paths. Although, Rossellini’s version of the femme fatale is portrayed as a frail woman. Marina doesn’t fully embody the vivacious and sexual role the previous Italian femme fatales had. She’s doesn’t sashay her way through life, instead she’s considered weak and unable to deny herself any desires. This is also illustrated by Rossellini’s portrayal of her “liaison” with the Nazi Ingrid (and to underline the “moral depravity” during the war). It’s important to note that while Marina is depicted as the sexual deviant, it is Pina’s motherly and devout character who ultimately comes across as impulsive and irrational.

In arguably one of the most famous scenes, Pina runs after a prison truck while shouting “Franchesco!” as her husband is taken by the Nazis. It’s a quick montage of short takes and one very dramatic tracking shot that underlines the abruptness and finality of death – the scene is inspired on a real life event in 1943 where Maria Teresa Gullace participated in a protest and was shot in front of her husband and son.

Roma, città aperta is one the most conventional films of Rossellini, well, at least in terms of narrative and dramatic structure. Through cinematic codes like shot / reverse shot, mise-en-scene, framing, and continuity montage, directors can reveal gender relations. Critic Laura Mulvey refers to it as the male gaze and states that cinema ideally is meant for the male audience. She divides the term in two: active male and the passive female. The problem lies in the fact that the woman is just a lust object on the screen, but that the male viewer meanwhile still has an irrational fear of the woman.

In Roma, città aperta the gaze shifted in the sense that the role of Pina and Marina is dialectical. The strong, motherly and modest woman knows her weak moments. Throughout the film the gaze lingers on the tired face of Pina. Marina realizes what she did, who she betrays and struggles to looks at herself in the mirror. Through this narcissistic gaze, the viewer is also hit with this realization. Pina is portrayed as the caring mother, and Francesco had found the perfect woman to start a family with. Marina is the epitome of the whore; she’s only there for men (or women) to have sex with, but cannot be tied down or feel true love. This is shown in her relationship with Manfredi. Manfredi’s looks and glances at Marina are nothing more than lustful. His gaze holds contempt for the fact that Marina is so weak, she’s willing to sell herself in order to establish a luxury life. Marina is clearly a passive female, but Pina has a more active stance. Nevertheless, her activity was not accepted and she comes to her untimely end.

Throughout the film, Rossellini leaves room for your own interpretation and strengthens the feeling of uneasiness that the story evokes – see the ambiguous “open” ending. The strength of Roma, città aperta lies ultimately in the images of Rome, the “amateur” actors (see the wonderful Magnani and Fabrizi), and the film’s aesthetic. It all lifts the film to the next level. Rossellini’s film depicts the reality of war and the displacement of women out their stereotypical roles during moments of distress.

Roma, città aperta has brought us some of the most indelible images in world cinema.

Giselle enjoys googling random things, late night conversations, and can’t stray far from the impulse to write it all down. She writes on fashion, film, and pop culture here.

Femme Fatale in a Training Bra: ‘Orphan’s Esther and The Questionable Motives of Lolita Haze

Movies where young girls are victimized are generally our idea of real world horrors, movies that are too sickening to sit through, but as much as they unsettle us, we expect them. We see these stories in the news every day. What is made truly terrifying and shocking in our culture is the advanced young girl already aware of her powers, and what she can get with them–a girl who knows how to move, how to dress, and how to manipulate.

This post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

The unnerving poster for Orphan — The unnerving poster for *Orphan*

It is very rare for a child to be a horror movie villain outside of a supernatural context. While we can turn off the movie, comforted that the children in Village of the Damned or the devil in The Omen’s Damien are fictional, we can’t entirely dismiss a child who simply goes bad, even if the narrative is as far-fetched as demonic possession and werewolves.

It frightens us because we know that an ordinary child going bad is somehow our fault, either as individuals or as a society. We have failed to intervene and save them before they were irredeemable.

In this light, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita continues to captivate literary discussions due to its unreliable narrator. Humbert Humbert defends himself, saying 12-year-old Dolores Haze seduced and manipulated him. He excuses his sexual relationship with her based on the fact that she had already lost her virginity and therefore he was not corrupting her; she was already to be considered somehow adult. Though most scholars view Humbert’s explanations as lies told to diminish his culpability, it is our tendency as readers to believe our narrator and identify with him (a major reason why the book is so disquieting).

Dominique Swain is a grubby, bratty Lolita

When the 1997 remake of Lolita appeared in theaters, amid protests of its sexual depiction of a child, this reading of the character as the seducer and the party deserving of blame was used as a defense. Likewise, in 1959, novelist Robertson Davies famously described the story as “not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child.” Despite the fact that “a corrupt child” is still a child who cannot consent to sexual activity, this view is mirrored in many real life court cases, where the abuse of young girls is excused because “she looked old for her age,” “she was already sexually active,” or that most horrifying of excuses, that paints a girl in a training bra as a whore in waiting: “she seduced me, she knew what she was doing.” If our culture finds the sexual desire of an adult woman to be monstrous and abhorrent, what are we to think of a child, this horror movie bogeyman-figure who seeks to ruin the lives of successful men, whose cries of victimization fall on deaf ears?

It’s a popular misogynistic narrative: the teenage femme fatale turns into a horrific stalker figure, bent on possessing a poor well-meaning man, usually a father figure or teacher. We’ve seen it time and time again in films like Poison Ivy, Devil in the Flesh, and The Crush, all with actresses of safely legal age for viewer lust and obvious attractiveness, and gratuitous shots of their bodies. There’s no question we’re meant to identify with the man and see him as an innocent victim, unsure why this monster-girl has seized upon him, as Joey Buttafuoco attempted to portray himself in the trial of Amy Fisher, the teenage mistress who shot his wife and was thereafter known as the Long Island Lolita.

Sue Lyon plays a glamourous conventionally attractive Lolita — Sue Lyon plays a glamourous, conventionally attractive Lolita

But this viewer-identification is only safe as long as we the audience feel comfortable lusting after the girl at its center. Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 version of Lolita upped the girl’s age from innocent 12 to an ambiguous early teens and eradicated glimpses from the book of Dolores’s gross childishness–the gum she was always chewing, her sticky fingers and snotty nose–that would disgust the audience and make Humbert clearly abhorrent. In addition, while still underage, actress Sue Lyon is of a more mature and glamourous physical type than the book’s Lolita, which makes viewers more comfortable with her sexualization. Dominique Swain in the remake, is the clumsy, sticky child that does (and should) turn us off and makes Humbert, not Lolita, the clear monster of the story.

The Colemans are charmed by sweet Esther

When it was released in 2009, Orphan was painted as a simple evil child movie, The Good Son with pigtails and a controversial anti-adoption stance. For awhile the narrative is conventional; Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a charismatic girl who can control and manipulate weaker children, like her new sister, Max, and adults. She attacks the girl who bullies her, kills a nun who promises to look into her back story and puts her adoptive brother in intensive care.

But the use of Esther as an advanced child, not only causally murderous but strangely sexual, adds a new dimension to this tale, marrying the evil child with the sexual stalker. Esther flirts with her adoptive father and attempts to kiss him and shocks her adoptive mother by stating matter-of-factly that she knows babies are made by men and women “fucking.”

There’s enough maternal and familial angst in the film to initially distract from Esther. The Colemans, a wealthy Connecticut family, decide to adopt a child to fill the void left after a miscarriage. Kate (Vera Farmiga) in particular feels the loss. Her husband and children are already wary of her because of her depression and alcoholism and refuse to believe her suspicions that something is very wrong with the angelic little girl they’ve brought into their home.

Through the film’s multiple acts, our view of Esther dramatically changes. Initially she is a perfect model child bullied for being sensitive and desperately in need of love, then she is a sociopathic child who hurts others without remorse, and finally, she is a crazy seducer, refusing to accept that she is not a sexy mature-bodied woman. In the film’s final act, we learn she is really a 33-year-old escaped mental patient with a pituitary disorder who has been posing as a child to be adopted by families and seduce the fathers.

Esther is made grotesque when she is revealed to be a 33-year old woman — Esther is made grotesque when she is revealed to be a 33-year-old woman

However, we see her strange sexual behavior before we learn that she is an adult woman, and it is clearly used to make us uncomfortable. As stated above, our culture’s fear of an overly sexualized child is rooted in our sense of guilt. We assume a child with this behaviour must be damaged in some way, must have fallen through the cracks of social services. Even if a child like Esther is a villain, we are obligated to feel sorry for her and speculate on the abuse she must have experienced. Orphan introduces Esther as a lonely, distanced child who has a difficult time relating to other people and children her age. It’s a narrative we’re already familiar with about children shuffled though orphanages and foster care, because in many cases it is a real life horror story.

Esther attempts to seduce her adoptive father

As such, we would ordinarily be wary of punishing Esther for her actions or question the degree of blame she deserves. A adult or teenage murderer must be killed or incarcerated to be disarmed, but what can we do with a little girl?

When The Bad Seed came out in 1956, The Hays Code put filmmakers in a difficult situation. Evil Rhoda (Patty McCormack) was not allowed to triumph, as she did in the source novel and play, as the code did not allow crime to pay, so the ending was rewritten to with Rhoda dying after being struck by lightening. Still, ending a film with the death of a child and using it as a cause for celebration would not sit well with audiences. A slapstick coda was pasted on, where Nancy Kelly, who played Rhoda’s mother, delivers a spanking to McCormack, intended to stress that it was only a movie and all meant in good fun.

In Orphan, the solution is to reveal she is not actually a little girl, and thus, can be punished harshly. We don’t need to worry about her parents or her upbringing or possible rehabilitation. We don’t need to feel sorry for her. She is officially a monster, a freak, so we can hit her with a shovel or throw her across the room and breathe satisfied. The reveal of her actual face, beneath the make-up and freed from her false teeth is horrifying in itself, as she suddenly looks like an adult woman. With this reveal, she becomes a legitimate monster, an adult face on a child’s tiny body, wrinkled and malformed, crawling around and fighting like an animal.

Esther views herself as trapped inside the body of a child and unable to live the life of a grown woman with a family and a lover. Because of her appearance, any attempt of hers to be a sexual being is automatically perverted.

Her jealousy of Kate, who has everything she is denied, contributes to the uniquely antagonistic relationship between them. Because Kate is able to see through Esther’s act, she is marked as her rival early on, even while Kate still sees Esther as her child. When Esther says “fuck,” she poses it as a challenge to Kate. If Esther is a child, there is nothing Kate can really do to her and not seem like the criminal. In most cases, being a child means you’re the one to be believed.

By the film’s end, as it devolves into a classic chase/fight scene, Esther and Kate become equals and Esther is validated as a romantic rival. These final scenes mirror chase/fight scenes between adult romantic rivals, like Fatal Attraction and Single White Female. It is very rare that an “evil kid” movie ends with the mother fighting the child, in these films the mother is usually killed earlier, as in The Omen.

In the end, movies like Orphan and stories like Lolita challenge our morality and our idea of what a child can be found guilty of. Orphan’s final twist allows us some relief from this uncertainty. If Esther’s not a child, if Lolita is aged up and filled out, we’re not allowed to be uncomfortable, even if it doesn’t change the meat of the story.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

The Coolest of Them All: An Ode to Marlene Dietrich

What modern cinema audiences should be interested in is his or her place in Hollywood history, and socio-cultural significance. Dietrich is a radical, and progressive cultural figure in terms of her sexual and gender identity. On and off screen. Her off-screen identity was also subversively androgynous and was often signified by her masculine attire.

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) was one of the most captivating, ground-breaking movie stars of the 20^th century. There were more talented Hollywood contemporaries, but perhaps none of them had that heady combination of characteristics that made up her extraordinary screen persona: supernatural beauty fused with transgressive, gender-subversive sexual magnetism. Dietrich challenged traditional definitions of femininity, and bourgeois notions of respectability in her own life too. Biographical accounts reveal that the German-born star had numerous affairs with both men and women. But Dietrich was not solely an uninhibited sexual non-conformist. She was also a woman of considerable political courage. A committed anti-Fascist, the actress denounced Hitler’s Germany, and worked actively, and unstintingly, against the Nazi regime. (She became a US citizen in 1939.) Dietrich was a fearless, resilient woman who entertained throughout most of her life. She became a cabaret singer in her fifties, and toured the world into her seventies, soldiering on despite injury, illness and addiction. Was Dietrich a feminist movie star? Yes, and no. Although it seems that she was ultimately imprisoned by heterosexist Hollywood ideals of feminine beauty (she was a recluse in her later years), she should, nevertheless, be appreciated as an iconic figure of female sexual independence, individuality, and strength.

As Amy Jolly in Morocco — As Amy Jolly in *Morocco*

Hollywood marketed Dietrich, from the start, as an expressly seductive, “exotic” European star. Time and again, she portrayed scandalous lovers, and glamorous femme fatales. Dietrich did not embody the modern, professional American woman on screen. She never played a lawyer or reporter like Katherine Hepburn. Many of her films are about the pleasures, and dangers of romantic and physical love. They deal with obsession, sacrifice, and betrayal. Dietrich’s heroines are, also, of course, invariably ultra-glamorous. The star first caught Hollywood’s attention in The Blue Angel (1930), a German production directed by the Austrian-American filmmaker, Josef von Sternberg. In The Blue Angel, Dietrich plays cabaret singer, and femme fatale, Lola Lola. The Blue Angel secured her a contract with Paramount and she made six other films with von Sternberg: Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil is A Woman (1935).

As Shanghai Lilly in Shanghai Express — As Shanghai Lilly in *Shanghai Express*

The glamorous, dreamy Dietrich look is at its most iconic in von Sternberg’s atmospheric, stylish films. In The Blue Angel, Dietrich is plumper, and more voluptuous, but in Morocco, she becomes slender and more angular. She would remain so. Von Sternberg, with whom the actress was romantically involved, has been described as a Svengali-like character. A maestro of light and shadow, influenced by German expressionism, the director is credited with sculpting the face of Dietrich on the screen, and shaping her mystique. The nature of Dietrich’s role in their personal, professional partnership will always be subject to debate but it was, ultimately, a creative union. It is also important to note that Dietrich gained knowledge during this period that would be employed throughout her career. It is said that she greatly understood lighting and was an inventive make-up artist.

Dietrich was not a traditional Hollywood star although she looked like a perfect example of constructed feminine beauty. Her beauty, in fact, transcends conventional glamour in its unearthliness. It’s also remarkable, and considerably subversive, that she frequently played economically independent women living, and working, outside the domestic space, and prescribed bounds of sexual propriety. In von Sternberg’s films, Dietrich plays cabaret entertainers (The Blue Angel, Morocco, and Blonde Venus), a courtesan (Shanghai Express), a prostitute-spy (Dishonored), an adulterous queen (The Scarlett Empress), as well as a predatory “vamp” (The Devil is a Woman). She also plays a saloon singer in the George Marshall-directed Western Destry Rides Again (1939), and a Baroness brothel owner in her final film, Just A Gigolo (David Hemmings, 1978). But the most unique aspect of Dietrich’s screen persona is her sexual presence. The modern viewer is, perhaps, most intrigued by her androgynous aspect and sexually subversive behavior.

As Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress — As Catherine the Great in *The Scarlet Empress*

In Morocco, Dietrich provides one of the most radical sexually charged moments in Hollywood history when her cabaret singer character, Amy Jolly, sings “Give Me The Man Who Does Things” in French. She appears on stage elegantly dressed in a tux, and top hat, with a cigarette between her lips. Stopping at a table after the performance, she downs a glass of champagne, takes a flower from the hair of a female customer, and kisses her directly on the mouth. She then throws the flower to a male admirer (Gary Cooper as a French legionnaire). It’s a deeply seductive display of bisexuality, and Dietrich’s performance is fluidly, and perfectly, executed.

Dietrich was also the star of a scene that can be only be described as both sexually “out there,” and racist, in terms of its setting and images. I refer to the “Hot Voodoo” number in Blonde Venus where Dietrich’s character, once again a seductive cabaret entertainer, wanders around in a gorilla costume, slowly emerges from the suit, dons a blonde Afro wig, and starts to sing imperiously and suggestively, with hands on hips, in front of accompanying “native girls.” It’s a both bizarre and unsettling number.

As Lola Lola in The Blue Angel — As Lola Lola in *The Blue Angel*

Von Sternberg’s films are set, for the most part, in “exotic,” worlds such as 1920s China (Shanghai Express) and imperial Russia (The Scarlett Empress), and his depiction of non-American places is simultaneously ultra-stylized, and offensive. The audience is, also, at times encouraged to associate Dietrich’s heroines with “otherness.” The end of Morocco is quite interesting in that it shows a European woman rejecting domesticity, stasis, and marriage for love, and a nomadic existence. In pursuit of her great love, Amy Jolly eventually heads off into the desert and joins the North African women who shadow the legionnaires.

Dietrich made her most celebrated, and extraordinary films with von Sternberg but there were at least a couple of other good, and remarkable films. A riotous energy and charisma are evident in Destry Rides Again where she plays a sassy saloon singer called Frenchy. She also puts in a fascinating, idiosyncratic performance in Orson Welles’s astonishing, and greatly stylized Touch of Evil (1958) as an outlandish cigar-smoking madam, and fortune-teller. She radiates personality, and insolence in the role. Dietrich moved away from the movies, and remade herself as a cabaret singer in the 50s. She worked with Burt Bacharach, and toured extensively for decades, before retiring in her 70s. The entertainer was the ultimate show business survivor.

In A Touch of Evil — In *A Touch of Evil*

Dietrich also had an interesting, unconventional private life. She did the conventional thing early on in her career by marrying a fellow German, director Rudolf Sieber, and bearing a child (a daughter named Maria) but soon took a radically different track. Although she remained married to her husband until his death in 1976 (as well as good friends), she separated from him, and reportedly had many affairs with both men and women. Which brings us briefly to the intimate Dietrich.

Characterizations of public personalities by the people who know them are often contradictory, and human beings are, of course, different people to different people. Biographical accounts attest that Dietrich was both deeply flawed as a mother, and hugely sympathetic as a friend. No doubt Dietrich’s bed-hopping must have caused pain to some of her lovers too. The function of film criticism, particularly star studies, is, however, not to marvel at, or judge a star’s number of partners. Leave that to biographers and the Daily Mail. What modern cinema audiences should be interested in is his or her place in Hollywood history, and socio-cultural significance. Dietrich is a radical, and progressive cultural figure in terms of her sexual and gender identity. On and off screen. Her off-screen identity was also subversively androgynous and was often signified by her masculine attire. There is, in fact, no overstating Dietrich’s modernity as fashion and erotic icon. Both the star’s bisexuality and sexually independent lifestyle, challenged patriarchy and she helped change the way 20^th century women looked and behaved. In light of this, it is all the more baffling and maddening that the star slammed feminism in her later years. Her views are expressed in Maximilian Schell’s 1984 documentary, Marlene, which features interviews with an unseen Dietrich eager to preserve her glamorous persona. Nevertheless, the star’s spirit of sexual autonomy and freedom remains extraordinary, a spirit which, no doubt, had its roots in the sexually liberated Germany of the 1920s. During this creative, volatile period, Dietrich had been a chorus-girl and theatre actress who also took boxing lessons. A product of the Weimar Republic, Dietrich was, indeed, the living antithesis of the puritanical, patriarchal Nazi regime.

Dietrich exhibited backbone and a principled, political consciousness during World War II. She not only condemned her own homeland’s nefarious government but also vigorously campaigned against it. The star raised war bonds, recorded music for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), and toured with the USO (United Service Organizations). She even entertained troops near the front. Both Hitler and propaganda minister, Goebbels, tried to get woo her back to Germany but she refused to be a Third Reich star. The Nazis responded by defaming her, and banning her movies. Dietrich was recognized by both the US and France for her war work. She was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945 and the French Legion of Honor. The star regarded this work as “the only important work I’ve ever done.” It is perhaps worth noting that both her father and step-father had been military men. There were German citizens who considered Dietrich a traitor– she received hate mail, and was once even spat at when she returned to her native land during post-war visits–but her anti-Nazi stance was also appreciated at home, and in 2002, the city of Berlin made her an honorary citizen.

The global screen star was a modern cosmopolitan woman who had friends, and lovers of many nationalities and backgrounds. She was a buddy of Asian-American actress Anna May Wong, and reportedly had affairs with legendary French singer, Edith Piaf, Cuban-American writer, Mercedes de Acosta, French actor, Jean Gabin, German writer Erich Maria Remarque, as well as American stars John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart. It is also said that she had a romantic relationship with Greta Garbo. Dietrich moved to Paris in her later years, after touring the world as a cabaret artist. She died in the French capital in 1992 at the age of 90.

Dietrich has endured as a cultural icon because she was, simply, way ahead of her time. Her chic, sexually ambiguous screen, and star personae have remained hugely influential in popular culture. Madonna, who somewhat resembles the actress, has, famously, paid homage to her style in her performances, most memorably perhaps in her 1993 Girlie Tour. But Dietrich’s name is not only immortalized in “Vogue”; she haunts Suzanne Vega’s very different track “Marlene on the Wall” too. Interestingly, Indiewire reported earlier this year that Megan Ellison is planning a TV show about Dietrich and Greta Garbo. It sounds like an exciting project but we can only hope the filmmakers will fully appreciate Dietrich’s sexual, and gender non-conformity, cosmopolitan lifestyle and anti-Fascist spirit. The star deserves no less. She was, after all, the coolest of them all.

Bewitched by Bridget: Female Erotic Subjectivity in ‘The Last Seduction’

Female viewers may derive psychological pleasure from watching Bridget’s erotic, self-interested shenanigans. It’s exhilarating to see a female cinematic character take sexual control and outwit her male partners. It makes a refreshing change from watching women suffer the pain of romantic love. We know that Bridget will never be a victim. She will never tolerate domestic drudgery or the compromises marriage brings. In fact, it’s pretty much a given that she will always overcome her opponents. Life is a pitiless yet entertaining Darwinian game in ‘The Last Seduction,’ and Bridget plays it brilliantly.

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

Bridget Gregory is one of American cinema’s great anti-heroines. Flawlessly played by Linda Fiorentino, she is the amoral yet captivating protagonist of John Dahl’s 1994 thriller, The Last Seduction. Fiorentino’s Bridget is a lithe, beautiful woman, and her look evokes heroines of post-war noir. Her sleek, dark hair has a Golden Age cut and style, and a cigarette is never far from her perfect lips. But Dahl’s neo-noir offers an original, post-modern female villain. She’s a femme fatale for the 90s. Bridget is, at heart, a tough, lone wolf entirely dedicated to serving her own interests and ensuring her self-preservation. A female lone wolf is rare in American movies and one of the pleasures of The Last Seduction is watching her survive and thrive. Bridget is, also, gender-subversive as well as a desiring and assertive erotic subject. It is her sexual subjectivity that enthralls, amuses, and entertains.

Made crystal clear from the very start of the film, Bridget is a colorful piece of work. She’s the manager of a New York telemarketing company, and we first see her taunting and egging on her subordinates with inspirational insults such as “maggots,” “suckers,” “bastards,” and “eunuchs.” Dahl cuts between this scene and another involving a man meeting two younger guys under a bridge. The man, we will discover shortly, is Bridget’s husband, Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman). A medical resident desperately in need of cash, he is presently selling drugs to pay off a loan shark. The dangerous, nerve-wracking deal scores the couple a handsome sum.

Husband and wife — Clay and Bridget: husband and wife

Clay is also a piece of work. As acquisitive as Bridget, he is also capable of violence. When Bridget later calls Clay an “idiot” back in their apartment for carrying the money around in broad daylight, he strikes her. He makes the cowardly excuse that he was shaken up by the deal, and Bridget fakes forgiveness. When he’s in the shower, however, she runs off with the stash. Before she quits the city, Bridget takes off her wedding ring. The act signifies a rejection of domesticity and traditional coupling as well as a repudiation of age-old ideas of female subservience and sacrifice. It also signals that she will now drive the narrative. Although the act of abuse serves as a trigger, the viewer is, in fact, encouraged to believe that Bridget is motivated by more than vengeance. She wants total mastery of her destiny and will do anything to achieve it.

She flees north. Stopping in a small, characterless town in “cow country,” she drops into a run-of-the-mill bar. A gorgeous, svelte yet foul-mouthed New Yorker, Bridget is perceived as an exotic figure in these parts. A young, attractive man with a pleasant personality and the very ordinary name of Mike, is drawn to her. Mike (Peter Berg) buys her a drink when her ungracious demand for a Manhattan is, quite understandably, ignored by the bartender.

Their first encounter serves as an amusing, outrageous antidote to the saccharine meet-cutes of 90s romantic comedies. Bridget initially refuses Mike’s quite ordinary advances in inimitably impolite fashion: “Go find yourself a nice little cowgirl and make nice little cow babies and leave me alone.” But when Mike good-humoredly makes the claim that he’s “hung like a horse,” Bridget offers him a seat. She proceeds to unzip his pants, fondle his dick, probe him about his sexual history, and, then, smell her fingers. Inspection over, the newly acquainted couple head off to his place and spend the night together. The morning after, she heads off without telling him her name or saying goodbye.

Their next meeting, at Mike’s place of work, is pure coincidence. Deciding to lay low in the town, Bridget secures a managerial position at the same insurance company as her new lover, and takes on the name of Wendy Kroy. She wants distance from Mike at work and warns him: “Don’t fuck with my image.” She is, however, more sociable when she meets him again at the bar.

They soon have sex near the dumpster behind the bar. Bridget directs their love-making and plays the more sexually dynamic part. Hanging onto the rails, in an elevated position, Bridget fucks Mike against a fence. With his pants down to his ankles and knees bent, he looks the more vulnerable partner in this al fresco erotic episode. He is also the emotionally vulnerable lover. “Where do I fit in?” Mike asks Bridget. “You’re my designated fuck,” she replies. She later rides him in her car.

Bridget, for the most part, assumes the traditionally dominant position in her love-making sessions with Mike. The filmmakers’ characterization of their female protagonist’s desire is unusual for American cinema. Bridget’s physical beauty is certainly not obscured, but she cannot be characterized as a classic Hollywood sex object. She is, instead, presented as an assertive, dynamic sexual subject. Intense physical pleasure is not bound up with the self-abandonment of romantic love. Nor does it signify psychic self-annihilation. Reproduction, furthermore, does not play a part in Bridget’s world. She and her husband are childless. Love has an ideological import, and it has often, let’s face it, been a trap for women in patriarchal society. Bridget, however, is not confined by love. Sex, for her, is about control, pleasure and play.

Mike, however, falls in love with Bridget and craves a more emotionally intimate relationship. He is flattered that she has chosen him, as he believes himself to be “bigger than this town.” Although he bemoans, in a somewhat boyish way, her arrogance and dominance. Mike realizes, a little late, that Bridget is a dangerous, amoral woman. He calls her “sick” and “deranged” when she suggests they “sell murder” to people (for example, to women who have been betrayed by their husbands), but he is ultimately ignorant of her true intentions. She becomes increasingly calculating with her lover, and he just can’t keep up. Although Mike is horrified when Bridget (falsely) tells him that she has successfully sold murder, he is eventually manipulated into agreeing to kill Clay. Note that Bridget has lied to him about the identity of his target. Mike is unaware that he has been sent to New York to murder Bridget’s husband; he believes his target to be a man who’s been driving old ladies out of their homes. I will not tell you what happens when Mike encounters Clay.

Bridget’s treatment of people, particularly men, remains consistently appalling throughout the film, but it goes beyond crude invective and exploitation. Bridget admits to Mike that she enjoys “bending the rules, playing with people’s brains.” She exploits both society’s moral codes and prejudices and takes advantage of the kindness of others. She espouses a certain moral relativism. When Mike says, helplessly, “Murder is wrong,” Bridget counters, “Unless the President says to do it.” In fact, Bridget gains an almost sexual pleasure plotting her clever moves. She screws men both literally and metaphorically.

Bridget’s unbound sexuality and gender-subversive behavior make her evil more interesting and radical. She knows how to manipulate the gender order and succeed in a phallocentric world. She is unfailingly resourceful and supernaturally resilient. In a way, this amoral female protagonist functions to strip patriarchy bare. Her cynical, manipulative words and acts serve to expose the weaknesses and wickedness of men: their insecurities, secrets, and vulnerabilities as well as their aggressive, acquisitive traits.

Bridget, as we have seen, does not conform to culturally constructed norms of femininity. She also manipulates and mocks conventional expectations of gender. Her parodic skills are neatly demonstrated in one short, entertaining scene when she offers cookies to a local detective her husband has recruited. Wearing a lace apron and a smile, she delivers the sweet gift to the man watching her movements in his parked car. He does not, however, see her placing a plank of nails by his tires, and he has only himself to blame when she drives off to an unknown destination.

The Last Seduction does not, of course, endorse a reversal of domination, but the movie makes for a playfully, and knowingly, subversive viewing experience. Although Bridget’s actions should not be read in a literal, man-hating way, female viewers may derive psychological pleasure from watching Bridget’s erotic, self-interested shenanigans. It’s exhilarating to see a female cinematic character take sexual control and outwit her male partners. It makes a refreshing change from watching women suffer the pain of romantic love. We know that Bridget will never be a victim. She will never tolerate domestic drudgery or the compromises marriage brings. In fact, it’s pretty much a given that she will always overcome her opponents. Life is a pitiless yet entertaining Darwinian game in The Last Seduction, and Bridget plays it brilliantly.

An in control Bridget — An in-control Bridget

Fiorentino’s interpretation of our deeply sexy, whip-smart anti-heroine is supremely persuasive. The casting is perfect; the actress should have won an Oscar for her performance, but the movie was shut out of the nominations because it was first shown on cable television before being given a cinematic release. Rules may be rules, but it’s nothing less than a sin that both Fiorentino and John Dahl’s smart, stylish film were deemed ineligible.

The Last Seduction is elegantly shot, well-paced and cleverly constructed. Bridget is the dominant sexual and narrative subject. The story is primarily shaped by her sensual, self-interested needs. If she can be characterized as a feminist cultural icon, she’s an amusing, distinctly anti-humanist one. One thing that’s certain is that watching her at work and play is the cinematic equivalent of an empowering Manhattan cocktail.