Characteristics 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.

Lewis uses lighting to dramatize the opening scene of the film and characterize the protagonist of the story. The most noticeable utilization of film noir lighting is in the beginning

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

In Double Indemnity, lighting plays a key role in visual design. Throughout the film there seems to be and absence of light when something secretive is going on. It is night time (or dark outside) when Walter begins to confess his actions, when Phyllis and Walter continue to meet, and when murders take place. This aids in presenting the dark and mysterious actions of the characters and adds a sense of danger. Shadows, also a play on lighting, seem to follow Walter throughout the entire film. This may represent the idea that something menacing is following Walter, possibly a foreshadowing of the confessions that are soon to be revealed. The shadows are typically obvious and over exaggerated, giving the scenes more of an uneasy feel. There is also a significant shift in lighting when Walter first meets Phyllis. The day goes from bright and sunny to dark and rainy. This is also a foreshadow of what's to come. Walter will be stepping out of the light and into Phyllis’ darkness.

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

expressions. Lighting was used in the film to portray this. Dim lighting was used whenever

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

Another technique that is used is changing light with reference to the plot structure. The use of lighting has allowed the audience to see the obvious contrast between the beginning when Szpilman was having a happy life, and after the Nazi came and occupied so that how Polish Jews are getting dehumanised. For instance, the light was extremely bright at the beginning of the film, Szpilman was playing the piano at the radio station and having a meal with the family. When the Nazi

Perhaps the biggest characteristic in Film Noir is the element that gives it it’s name: the visual style. Whether it be a detective story, a crime drama, or Sunset Boulevard’s dramatized look at behind-the-scenes Hollywood, film noirs are all shot in a very distinct manner. The lighting is often single-source, making heavy use of chiaroscuro, a high contrast between light and dark, using things such as streetlights or venetian blinds to convey this visual style. The environments are often portrayed as gritty streets, wet from rain and illuminated primarily by streetlights, or claustrophobic-looking rooms with amounts of smoke that would trigger any working smoke alarm nowadays, depending on the location, to get across a pessimistic attitude. Sunset Boulevard, despite it’s name which could be interpreted as a pretty sight, definitely shows a darker appearance of Hollywood. When Joe first sees Norma’s mansion, he notices how

Next, the audience sees a man in a priest 's clothes hurrying down the sidewalk late at night. The lighting is very important in this shot as it sets a very serious, ominous tone. The character also looks over his shoulder hastily as if he 's worried someone might see him. The camera goes to a wide shot to show that two young girls are right behind Keller as he briskly walks away from his crime. Then the shot fades into Keller walking towards the camera down an alleyway. The lighting is still extremely gloomy and shadowy as he takes off into a dark corner. The next shot has a "revealing" as Keller takes off his priest clothing and he looks around suspiciously.

audience) that he will wait in a café until he finds her. The café he

The “femme fatale” was a common theme in the 1940’s it is a female lead who uses sensuality and mystery to seduce and manipulate the male character of the film. No American detective novel written in the thirties would be complete without the figure of the "femme fatale," a French term meaning deadly woman. A femme fatale is an irresistibly beautiful woman who uses her sexuality to seduce men and lure them into dangerous situations to serve her own selfish interests. There is a fair few of these in The Big Sleep, but none of them is quite the dynamo that Vivian turns out to be. I also believe that Carmen Sternwood could be considered a femme fatale as well.

His cinematography “creates an exceptionally inviting, varied look for this nocturnal story, and special visual effects are smoothly integrated into the action. The makeup that adds pale eyes, ghostly pallor and tiny blue veins to the principals' faces manages to create a frisson of danger without marring the actors' attractiveness” (Maslin). Rousselot used dark-lensing, a way to attain low key shots and thus created a huge contrast to the sets and costumes (Maslin). This made the characters seem as though they were the only important things in the otherwise dark and gloomy shots.

The scene is set at night time so all the light in the scene is artificial from the street lamps; the light is dim but harsh casting dark shadows and creating a chiaroscuro effect, this is iconic of film noir and crime movies and it signifies that evil

This research is a study of the term femme fatal. The femme fatale are those women who use bad manners to attract other men. The first objective of the study is to find out femme fatale elements in Christabel. The other objective is to find out the femme fatale elements in the poem. The other objective is to know how Geraldine enchants Sir Leoline and Christabel.