Character Analysis Of Femme Fatale

Along with chiaroscuro, lighting a dark weather, the femme fatale is one of the main traits of film noir. It is the femme fatale that excites and draws in the audience.

This likely spurred a bit of fear and resentment in men as these women played a much bigger role in society than ever before. Film noir reflected this by elevating the female character from a passive supporting figure to the femme fatale. Suddenly, women were cast as seductive, autonomous, and deceptive predators who use men for their own means (Barsam and Monahan 95). The Maltese Falcon was no different. In the film, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (who previously went by the fake name Ruth Wonderly) plays the femme fatale. We watch as she rejects the traditional roles of wife and mother as she uses Floyd Thursby and continually tries to use Sam Spade with the intention of discarding them when they finish serving her purpose. She uses her sexuality as her main weapon as she lies and manipulates her way through life. O’Shaughnessy’s strong, sexual, and dominant character is only one way in which women’s role in society is portrayed in this movie. Spade’s treatment of O’Shaughnessy illustrates what American society valued and trusted during the time period. In current times, his treatment of women would lead to outrage but he is more or less the poster boy for American society at that time. Generally speaking, our society was distrustful of the empowerment and enfranchisement of women and

The scene right after this one takes place from Norman’s point of view. Here we witness him peeping on Marion while she’s undressing through a hidden hole in the wall. It is made clear to the audience that Norman is sexually repressed and that he desires Marion. In her article, “Coveting the Feminine,” Diane Negra writes on Norman Bates’ psychology and how it is stemmed in his repressed sexuality and oedipal complex, “Psycho features a protagonist who manifest extreme behavior in a desperate attempt to circumvent cultural restrictions on the expression of forms of sexuality judged inimical to the status quo,” and, “Norman Bates takes on the personality of the mother he murdered out of jealousy, projects his jealousy onto her, and murders women he finds desirable in order to punish himself,” (Negra, 193-200). The bird imagery is again prevalent in this scene. While Marion is changing she is next to two framed portraits of these small helpless little birds. Norman watches her through the peephole like a predator stalking his prey. Clearly, Hitchcock heavily included birds in the films mise-en-scene as a visual representation of Norman’s relationships with women.

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

Evelyn and as a result, the setting, characters, plot, action are the revelation of Mrs.

Unlike most Femme Fatales, who are deceitful for selfish reasons- money, sex, etcetera, Evelyn Mulwray is not trying to deceive anyone for her own desires. Mulwray is merely trying to do what is best for her daughter, shown when Evelyn yells at her father to get away from her daughter right before pulling a gun on him. Chinatown, while being a classic Film Noir movie, deviates from the stereotypes of its genre in some instances. As mentioned in a review of the movie, Chinatown’s lack of looming cityscapes, heavy shadows, and rainy sidewalks typically seen in a Film Noir movie (Meyer). However, it manages to stay true to the genre through the blurry/smoke effects that make the film feel like it was made earlier than it actually was. In addition, the movie also portrays some stereotypes that are frequent within the genre, such as heavy usage of cigarettes, Femme Fatales, and other character roles that fit into the genre of Film Noir. To add to the similarities of Chinatown to a classic work of Film Noir, a dark mystery element complemented with the unhappy ending is present in the film that really screams “Film Noir”. The class differences between Jake Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray make the characters very distinct, as the contrast of their social upbringings makes them seem even more different and stand out even

The classic femme fatale in forced to resort to murder to free herself from an unbearable relationship with a man who would try to possess and control her, as if she were a piece of property or a pet. According to Sylvia Harvey, author of Women's place: The absent family, the women of film noir are "presented as prizes, desirable objects" for the leading men of these films. The femme fatale's unique power is her brazen willingness and ability to express herself in sexual terms. By this the femme fatale threatens the status quo, and the hero, because she controls her own sexuality outside of marriage. She uses sex for pleasure and as a weapon or a tool to control men, not merely in the culturally acceptable capacity of procreation within marriage. Her sexual emancipation commands the gaze of the hero, the audience, and the camera in a way that cannot be erased by her final punishment. Attempts to neutralise the power and blatant sexuality of the femme fatale by destroying her at the end are usually unsuccessful, because her power extends beyond death. Noir films immediately convey the intense sexual presence of the femme fatale by introducing her as a fully established object of the hero's obsession. Since the camera often represents the hero's subjective memory, revealed

“No one loses their innocence. It is either taken away or given willingly” Tiffany Madison. A person’s innocence and freedom should be theirs to hold and control, but that is not always the way things unfold. Conviction flaws, poor evidence, and the social responses to these flaws are all involved and present in the cases of Paula Gray and Keith Allen Harward, as new evidence thirty years after they were imprisoned comes to light.

The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry follows the lives of various women in Chicago who are on trial for murder in the 1920’s and the new kid on the block reporter following their cases. While The Girls of Murder City did have a few good parts and vivid description, the book was overtaken by its lack of relevant information, poor pacing and flow, and its inability to make us want to pick up the book again.

Film noir employs several character archetypes to tell a story. Cultural changes and shifts in gender roles of post WWII America unsettled men when many women refused to regress back into traditional housewife tasks. This fear was manifested in cinema’s femme fatale. Deceptive and manipulative, femme fatales were there to seduce, betray, and destroy the film noir hero. Norma, along with being deranged, is all of these things. She is at home in her eerie film noir setting. Her movements showing her as a self absorbed echo of her career in silent era films and her voice and facial expressions set the listener on edge. Joe Gillis

I am writing you regarding Dayna Marie Forderer. I have had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Dayna in the past year. During our acquaintance, I have worked along side Dayna and also got to know her on a personal level. Dayna and I, both went to Sheridan College, worked on many assignments together and were on the Sheridan Sun newspaper.

One of my challenges is sharing a room with my sister and her name is Marcie Fuentest was a challenge because when it was bedtime and I was trying to go to bed and Marcie would talk to me for hours and hours.I fix it by “telling her if she dose’t be quite then” I will tell my mom and dad and then she was

From silent short films of the 19th century to full length films of the 1920s, women have played important central roles over time. Women have transitioned from submissive conservative roles to liberal something. A big part of this is due to the view of women changing in history.

The main female character is Molly, an ex-military member, probably Special Forces, who aids the main character through out the story. She is portrayed as a woman who is not to be messed with. " Because you try and fuck around with me, you'll be taking on of the stupidest chances of your whole life."(25) This attitude serves her well through out the novel because she is the one who must infiltrate both the Sense/Net and Tessier-Ashpool. Molly is the only woman on the "good" guys side who is physically injured. Even when she is injured, she continues the mission. Molly is able to do things that the men in the story cannot because she is "souped up, jazzed by the neurosurgeons for combat." (214) Her eyes are video cameras and she has a clock mounted inside her head. Four-millimeter razor claws are concealed beneath each fingernail and she has the ability to extend and retract them at will. Her military training has provided her with the ability to fight and execute order with swiftness and precision. From a feminist approach, she is a positive character. She is a strong character in a male dominated society. But she is not the only female character in the novel.

The presentation of women on screen is another highlighted issue in many of the gathered sources. Because men were ultimately in control of what went on the screen much of what the audience perceived were women from the male imagination or fantasy. Bernard Beck elaborates in his article Where the Boys Are: The Contender and other Movies about Women in a Man’s World that, “…women have been used to dress up a male story or motivate a male character” (Beck 15). Women were often insignificant and trivial characters. Although, Kathe Davis disagrees to a point. In her article, Davis offers a dissonant opinion to the fore-mentioned insignificance of the female character. She instead describes many female characters as “predators,” and analyzes the roles of lead women in three prominent films of the nineteenth century. In each film, she finds parallels and similarities of cases of “female emasculation” and instances where “women are turned into objects of male desire” (Davis 47-48). Davis does not perceive female characters as being insignificant, just stripped of their power and misrepresented. She discusses how females of power are often portrayed as crazy