Soft vs. Hard Femme Fatale
Introduction
In 1941, International Lady and The Maltese Falcon were released very close together. According to InternetMovieDatabase: on October 16 and October 18, respectively; and according to the American Film Institute: September 19 and October 18, respectively. Despite the first film being a spy noir and the second a crime noir, they share so many features that it is worth closely comparing them. For example, not only is there a spider woman in both films, but she is also a “soft” femme fatale, rather than a “hard” one. Below I provide an extensive explanation, a historic periodization and descriptions of soft femmes fatales in crime noirs in early WWII years vs. the appearance of hard femme fatales in postwar crime noirs.
There is a bibliography at the end of this page.
International Lady: Main Credits
Director: Tim Whelan. Screenplay: Howard Estabrook. Producer: Edward Small. Cinematographer: Hal Mohr. Music: Lucien Moraweck. Art Director: John DuCasse Schulze. Editor: William F. Claxton, Grant Whytock. Cast: George Brent (Tim Hanley), Ilona Massey (Carla Nillson), Basil Rathbone (Reggie Oliver), Gene Lockhart (Sidney Grenner), George Zucco (Webster), Francis Pierlot (Dr. Rowan), Martin Kosleck (Brunner), Charles D. Brown (Tetlow), Marjorie Gateson (Bertha Grenner), Gordon De Main (Denby). Released: Edward Small Productions, October 16, 1941 (US). 102 minutes.
Presentation
Many if not most people with even a casual interest in film noir have seen The Maltese Falcon. However, even film noir buffs are unlikely to have watched International Lady. But it wasn’t obscure in 1941. According to James Robert Parish and Michael R. Pitts, in The Great Spy Pictures, “A high grade “B” film, International Lady often got top-of-the-bill bookings when issued, due mainly to its stars, and the nifty supporting cast….” (238)
A plot summary of International Lady by Michael S. Hull and David Edward Witt in Hollywood War Films, 1937-1945 (McFarland & Company, 2006) is as follows.
“Carla Nillson (Ilona Massey), a singing Axis agent who claims to be a Norwegian refugee, leaves war-torn London to make contact with a gang of Nazi saboteurs and spies operating in New York City. Carla’s songs are coded so that when she makes broadcasts for a chocolate manufacturer’s radio show, the Germans are alerted to exactly when and where flights of American-built “Flying Fortresses” are departing for Britain. A Scotland Yard man (Basil Rathbone) and an FBI agent (George Brent) join forces to break up the gang of enemy agents, which includes a doctor perfecting a chemical additive which will sabotage the planes’ engines. Carla changes her tune after falling in love with her handsome FBI nemesis.” (127)
The following themes are present in both International Lady and The Maltese Falcon.
Foreign Persons, Foreign Places and Foreign Threats
The characters as well as the locales that are represented in both films are international.
Carla Nillson, the title character in International Lady, has a passport from her “home, Norway.” Agents from two countries, the UK and the US, are trying to obtain “direct evidence to arrest her” as a spy operating for an unnamed “enemy.” That is, despite being released less than two months before Pearl Harbor, International Lady is an example of Hollywood’s continued avoidance of referring to the Nazis by name. However, from the opening scene – a nighttime aerial bombing of London (from a combination of actual film footage and studio sets) – we are supposed to understand that the enemy is Hitler’s Germany.
The film’s principal and secondary characters are shown in London, Lisbon, the US (New York, Sands Point, Utica), Canada, and Berlin.
Although the plot of The Maltese Falcon only occurs in San Francisco (and briefly in nearby Burlingame), it has been analyzed in terms of its international aspects. In Darkly Perfect World, Stanley Orr writes:
“Throughout Hammett’s Continental Op stories and The Maltese Falcon (1929), San Francisco becomes an arena for dramas of colonial struggle and competition. Like Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, the Hammett detective confronts unruly exotics and corrupted colonials who threaten the integrity of the metropolis.” (15)
“…The Maltese Falcon’s Joel Cairo [is] an invasive alien who reads as an almost allegorical sign of the “Levant…Caspar Gutman in The Maltese Falcon [is] an adventurer who not only colludes with exotics Joel Cairo and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, but one who narrates a cynical historiography of colonial corruption [the background story of the titular Falcon].” (41)
The geographical references in The Maltese Falcon include: Spain, Sicily, Paris, Greece, London, Russia, Istanbul, New York, Hong Kong, and of course Malta.
In his essay, “The Maltese Falcon, the Detective Genre, and Film Noir,” William Luhr interprets the “foreign-ness” within the film as follows.
“The Maltese Falcon serves as a kind of baseline against which to measure [director John] Huston’s later critique of American xenophobia; it also reflects widespread American cultural presumptions less than a month before its entry into World War II: In it, things from foreign lands are associated with evil, perversity, and death.” (12)
Rings Around Inestimably Valuable Objects
In The Maltese Falcon there are four seekers of what the private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) calls “the stuff that dreams are made of” – a foot-high golden statuette of a falcon, encrusted all over with precious jewels. Spade has to deal with these characters who have been at times working together or at other times working against one another. For example, Caspar Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) is working with Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre). When Gutman fills in Spade about the history of the falcon and his quest for it, he says he had once sent “some agents,” that is, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) and Floyd Thursby (unseen), to obtain the falcon for him. But after they got hold of it, they kept it for themselves. On arriving in San Francisco, Thursby is murdered by Gutman’s hired gunsel, Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.).
International Lady also has a small ring involved with something of inestimable value. Sidney Grenner may have less girth than Caspar Gutman, but he, too, carries the most weight, literally and figuratively. Grenner is the chocolate manufacturer who sponsors a radio show. His gunsel is Webster, who acts as Grenner’s butler but is also a colonel in the enemy’s army. Dr. Rowan is a scientist responsible for creating the formula for a chemical additive.
When a fifth columnist in the US Air Force injects the additive into an airplane’s fuel tank, it will break down the gasoline at a predetermined time. Once a plane is unable to continue flying, after a calculated interval following takeoff, it will have traveled too far over the ocean to be able to turn back. The chemical damage to the carburetor puts the plane out of commission until a new carburetor is received from the factory.
A Scotland Yard official explains to Reggie Oliver and Tim Hanley the extreme danger the success of this sabotage poses to Great Britain. “Our fight and our future depend largely on the supply of planes coming to us from America. That takes precedence over anything…Planes are our lifeline, and the enemy isn’t bothering with scruples in their endeavor to break it.”
Gene Lockhart, Francis Pierlot and George Zucco with Ilona Massey.
Carla comes to the US to keep breaking that lifeline. In live broadcasts in different cities she sings and plays piano on Grenner’s radio shows. A very complicated code is embedded in Carla’s musical score. Through her performances, the Germans are alerted to exactly when and where flights of American-built “Flying Fortresses” are departing for Britain. Then those planes get the additive.
Carla’s performances must be broadcast very soon before “Flying Fortresses” are scheduled to depart from North America to Britain. Fifth columnists provide the planes’ departure dates and times. The scientist Dr. Rowan says, “Perfect coordination is essential. The chemical formula is very sensitive. The ingredients must be freshly prepared and used within a few hours.”
Regarding the value of the falcon, Gutman tells Spade, “There’s no telling how high it could go, sir. That’s the one and only truth about it.” The analog to this in International Lady is the musical score. As long as the code is unbroken, the score is of supreme value to the enemy and of national peril to the UK.
Detectives and Mysteries
It goes without saying that Sam Spade is one the most celebrated gumshoes in literature as well as cinema.
However, International Lady is also about detectives and solving mysteries. This makes the plot of International Lady atypical for a spy noir.
Tim works for the FBI and Reggie for Scotland Yard. Sam is a private eye, taking cases for people who come to his office; Tim and Reggie are employees of public institutions, handling assignments given to them by their superiors. Sam operates solo; Tim and Reggie work with teams of colleagues. Just like a “classical” detective, Sam, a hardboiled shamus, figures out a whodunit by ratiocination. In contrast to the cerebral methods of classical and as well as hardboiled private investigators, Tim and Reggie utilize sophisticated technology to aid them in deciphering the code embedded in Carla’s musical score.
“Soft” Femmes Fatales vs. “Hard” Femmes Fatales
I agree with Julie Grossman, who writes in Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
“I also want to point out the extent to which very few ‘femmes fatales’ really fit the strict ‘femme fatale’ model of evil, opaque woman who ‘cannot be humanized,’ which explains why Phyllis Dietrichson [Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Double Indemnity] becomes canonized as the prototype for the ‘femme fatale’…In fact, as I am suggesting, most ‘femme fatale’ figures are distinctly humanized within the films, sometimes through plot and setting, sometimes through our awareness of the villainy of the male protagonist, and sometimes through the star text or the screen presence of the actress playing the lead female role.” (47)
An example of the conception of the femme fatale as a static, unchangeable character is provided at the bottom of the home page, What is the Film Noir File?, in a quote from film critic Sura Wood, “[T]he femme fatale [is] a woman who is as relentless as she is unsentimental. The iconic femme fatale is devastatingly beautiful, seductive and more driven by a lust for power than by passion.” Wood refers to the femme fatale as “that staple of noir myth.” What is actually mythical, as Grossman’s book demonstrates, is Wood’s conception of the femme fatale.
The phrase Grossman quotes, “cannot be humanized,” comes from Foster Hirsch, in his book Detours and Lost Highways (Limelight, 1999). Grossman says, “…Hirsch prescribes the original-cycle ‘femme fatale’ in a way that suggests, to me quite strangely, a desire or need to maintain the category of the destructive ‘femme fatale’ as fixed:
‘…the immutable noir logic [is] that a ‘femme fatale’ cannot be humanized: see Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.’” (Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir, 47; and Detours and Lost Highways, 60)
Drawing on Grossman’s discussion of the humanizing of a femme fatale in a crime noir, I want to suggest two types of femme fatale: the soft and the hard. The distinction between them is based on the extent to which the soft is more humanized, and the hard is less so, if at all.
My criterion for the evidence of greater humanizing in the soft femme fatale is the depth and sincerity of her romantic feelings for a man, even one who is aware of and willing to have her arrested for her misdeeds. Of course, these misdeeds, as well as her seductive attraction to the man, are what make her a femme fatale.
In contrast, a hard femme fatale doesn’t fall for the man who may threaten her freedom (from prison or execution), and she is duplicitous until the very end, which may be of her own life.
In crime noirs, a shorthand for distinguishing the soft femme fatale from the hard is that the behavior of the soft is marked by love. Thus, when she commits murder it is out a passion, frequently jealousy. (See the plot summaries below in the list of Crime Noirs with a Soft Femme Fatale, 1940-1942.)
In contrast, when a hard femme fatale commits murder or is involved with murder, it frequently it out of greed. She may also love a man, who may not only be her partner in crime, but also the actual killer. Furthermore, she may deliberately be part of a scheme to set up another man as a fall guy to take the rap for the murder.
In contrast, with a soft femme fatale, if a man is made to be a fall guy, it is likely because he has rejected the woman’s love, not because he was targeted from the outset to be arrested, put on trial, etc.
In the years 1940-1942, the first femmes fatales in crime noirs are all soft. They commit murder out of passion, frequently jealousy. In other words, the motive for the killings in these films corresponds with that of crime noirs, in general, and “war noirs,” in particular, that were released from 1940-1944. For more discussion about this, see the page Film Noir Plot Elements: WWII vs. Postwar. In this post, I explain my definition of “personal property,” which is exclusive to the crime noirs of these years.
Beginning in 1944, just as the soft femme fatale is joined by the hard one, so too are crimes for personal property joined by those for “public property,” whose definition I provide, along with examples from many post-war crime noirs in this same post.
A war noir, as I explain in that post, does not feature a femme fatale. In war noirs, there is a innocent hunted man, and his innocence is established typically with the aid of a woman who has a job (his “ally”).
What is characteristic of the crime noirs in the WWII years is that, whether they are or aren’t war noirs or whether they have a soft femme fatale, all of them only deal with personal property. Then, as of 1944, war noirs disappear, hard femmes fatales appear, and crimes start to be committed for public property. In short, the periodization in the transformation in crime noirs from the WWII years to the post-war years, in terms of different plots, characters and types of “property,” is consistent.
For an analysis of femme fatales in spy noirs, 1937-1945, in which there are hard femme fatales years before 1944, see the page Spy Noirs & the First Femme Fatales.
Crime Noirs with a Femme Fatale, 1944: title, femme fatale (actor), hard or soft, and if hard: object of greed, month of release in 1944
Double Indemnity, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), hard, $100,000 from a double indemnity clause in her husband’s life insurance policy, July
Port of 40 Thieves, Muriel Chaney (Stephanie Bachelor), hard, the multi-million dollar estate of her husband whom she murdered, August
Strangers in the Night, Hilda Blake (Helene Thimig), soft, September
The Woman in the Window, Alice Reed (Joan Bennett), hard, $5000 in blackmail scheme, November
Guest in the House, Evelyn Heath (Anne Baxter), hard, becomes the mistress of a man’s house and replaces his wife, December
Murder, My Sweet, Helen Grayle/Velma Valento (Claire Trevor), marriage into wealth and high social status, December
The Soft Femme Fatale in The Maltese Falcon: Brigid O’Shaughnessy
Unlike Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Carla Nillson is an unproblematic soft femme fatale. Therefore, I want to consider Brigid first.
In Dark City: The Film Noir, in addition to 490 thumbnail descriptions of film noirs in the “classic era” (1940-1959), Spencer Selby presents close analyses of 25 film noirs, the first of which is The Maltese Falcon. Selby carefully examines the “climatic confrontation” between Sam and Brigid.
“By the time she does admit her crime [i.e., murdering Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, played by Jerome Cowan], Spade seems to relish her fear: ‘Yes, Angel, I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.’ The ruthless irony with which Spade delivers these lines indicates anything but real sympathy for Brigid’s plight. He truly seems to hate her at this point, and she responds with an accusation charged with its own kind of irony: ‘You’ve been playing with me; just pretending you cared, to trap me like this. You don’t care at all! You don’t love me!’ This comment could represent Spade’s distrust as well as Brigid’s. He replies that he won’t ‘play the sap’ for her, and she desperately tries to argue the existence of their mutual love. Spade refuses to completely deny the love but maintains that other factors make it untenable.
“…He admits that some of the reasons for turning Brigid in may be unimportant, but still maintains that the risks of letting her go outweigh the possibility of mutual love. It seems fairly certain that Spade has a strong emotional feeling for her. The question is whether it could be called real love. Brigid maintains that love could never be outweighed by the factors Spade has outlined, and Spade has no reply for that one. The viewer is forced to agree with Brigid and admit that Spade refuses to let himself really love her because it is too dangerous.” (10-11)
Is Brigid lying about her love for Sam, just to trick him into letting her go? Is Sam unnecessarily afraid of a future threat on his life that Brigid poses? (If he couples with her instead of sending her over, he frets that, “I couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t put a hole in me one day.”)
It is impossible to know the answers to these questions. In any event, the answers don’t matter. Without any further exposition of the plot of The Maltese Falcon, Selby’s examination of Sam and Brigid’s confrontation is sufficient to demonstrate the significance of romance between the two characters. The sheer intensity of their grappling with whether they love one or another proves that Brigid is a soft femme fatale. No such pleading would ever be made by a hard femme fatale.
The Soft Femme Fatale in International Lady: Carla Nillson
In contrast, evaluating what kind of femme fatale Carla Nillson is in International Lady is a piece of cake. (In fact, there is a wedding cake in her future.)
In the film, neither of Carla’s two broadcasts directly causes any deaths. Following her first performance, a radio newsflash announces, “Two British cargo steamers were torpedoed and sunk by an enemy (i.e., not explicitly Nazi) submarine 700 miles out from New York. The crews are being rescued by an American liner.” The steamers were transporting airplane parts. Also, the pilots, whose planes are sabotaged by the additive, land safely.
Nonetheless, Carla’s work is impeding the supply of planes from America to Britain and, therefore, she is breaking what the Scotland Yard official calls, “our lifeline.” This can only mean that, by weakening Britain’s air strength to defend itself if not counter-attack, Carla is responsible for deaths in Britain.
At the start of the film, she enjoys her work. Although the bombing raid on London in the opening scene seems to have stopped, Tim still wants to escort Carla to an air raid shelter. Politely, she declines, “Thank you, but if it’s all clear, I don’t think it’s necessary.” He responds, “I think it’s very necessary. Why we’re apt to have another raid any moment.” Her face lights up with pleasure, “Do you really think so?”
She already knows that Tim can help her get a US visa (because he has told her he has connections at the US Embassy), so she changes her mind and accompanies him to the shelter. She uses Tim, but she also seems attracted to him. Certainly, she doesn’t want him harmed.
At Grenner’s mansion, when Tim is knocked out by a stun gun fired by Webster, Carla reaches his body first and discovers his FBI badge. She hides it while Webster searches Tim, and replaces it inside his jacket after Webster goes away. The following day, once Tim has departed from the house (and therefore is safe), Carla tells the four men in her ring what she has learned.
Grenner devises a plan in which Carla will set Tim up to be killed by Webster. She doesn’t embrace the scheme, but she acquiesces in carrying it out.
Carla is to have Tim to go to the roof garden at her hotel to watch the July 4th. fireworks, whose noise will drown out the sound of Webster’s gunshot from the roof of an opposite building. As Carla and Tim ride an elevator to the terrace, she is to say that she wants to get a wrap from her room, and then she will join him. Instead, she is to go to the lobby, where she will be publicly seen making a train reservation to leave New York (i.e., establishing an alibi).
Carla executes the plan, but while watching the clock come closer to the time when the fireworks will go off, she suddenly cancels the reservation, takes the elevator to the roof garden, and rushes to Tim to tell him that she knows who he really is. She urges him to leave the terrace.
She says, “You’re in a trap. It’s partly my making, but I can’t undo it now.”
He asks, “Who is in it with you?” (Carla won’t tell him, so he refuses to go.)
“I know that I’ve fought you just as hard as you’ve fought me. But there’s one thing I’ll never understand. Why are you doing this?”
“I know you won’t believe me. It’s because…Oh, Tim! Because you mean everything to me. Please trust me.”
The fireworks start. Carla sees Webster on the other roof.
She cries, “Please let’s go!”
Tim asks, “Is that the signal to spring the trap?”
“Yes!”
Carla steps around Tim to be in front of him, and she is hit in her back by the bullet Webster fires. Holding her in his arms, Tim says to her, “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I understand everything now.”
Tim has Carla rushed to a hospital for surgery and then he takes off by car in pursuit of the fleeing Webster.
What follows is a lengthy scene, with some notably fine noir visual style, in which Tim and Reggie capture Webster and Dr. Rowan and others at the site where the additive is made.
The following day Tim and Reggie arrest Grenner.
Tim visits Carla at the hospital after her surgery.
He says, “I suppose they’ve told you.”
She replies, “That you’ve placed me under arrest? Yes, and I understand. You’ve done your duty. We’re both soldiers. You won. That’s all.”
“Nobody wins this way. And one day when all this is over, it’ll just be you and I.”
“Yes, my darling, and if your work can bring peace, that’s all I want.”
“That’s all this dizzy world wants.”
As Tim and Carla kiss, Reggie walks into her room to give her a bouquet of flowers and to express his sincere good wishes for her complete recovery.
Tim sends Carla over, just as Sam does to Brigid. However, we can anticipate that Carla will only serve a short stretch, and then she and her arresting officer will get married. International Lady, therefore, features an exemplar soft femme fatale.
Soft Femmes Fatales in Crime Noirs, 1940-1942
Below is the necessarily short list of the femme fatales in crime noirs between 1940 and 1942. It is brief because the femme fatale in crime noirs only takes off as of 1944. Note that in every film on the list, there is a soft femme fatale. The “man in trouble” is in some way entangled with the spider woman. (Depending on the film, there may be “men in trouble.”)
Crime Noirs with a Soft Femme Fatale, 1940-1942: title, date, femme fatale (actor), man/men in trouble (actor/s)
They Drive by Night, 1940, Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino), Joe Fabrini (George Raft)
A woman is married to the owner of a trucking company, but she is in love with one of the drivers. Despite her aggressive advances, he refuses to cheat on her husband, who is also his good friend. One night, when her husband is passed out in their car, she leaves the motor running and walks past the light beam that automatically closes the garage doors. With her spouse out of the way, she promotes the driver to be her business partner, hoping he will finally fall for her. Instead, to her shock, he introduces her to his girlfriend. At her mansion, beside herself with jealousy, she says to him, “She hasn’t any right to you. You’re mine and I’m hanging on to you. I committed murder to get you.” After he walks out, she frames him for “making” her do the killing. At his trial, it seems he will be convicted. Then, she takes the stand and has a mental breakdown, saying over and over, louder and louder, until she is screaming, “The doors made me do it!” She is committed to an asylum, and he and his girlfriend plan to wed.
The Letter, 1940, Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis), Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall)
On a rubber plantation in Malay, a woman shoots her lover, then tells her husband she had been assaulted. Her attorney learns of a letter she sent her lover, on the day of his death, imploring him to come see her. He says it shows she didn’t kill in “self-defense.” Violating his “professional duty” and risking disbarment, he arranges for her to purchase the letter from the man’s “Eurasian” wife for $10,000. After her acquittal, her husband learns the payoff cost him his savings and, thus, a chance to buy a better plantation. He also discovers she loved the other man “for years,” and she murdered him from jealousy of his wife and fury he wanted to end their affair. Despite this, her husband is willing to forgive her. Yet, when he asks if she loves him, she cries out, “With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!” He leaves her, and she looks for a knife that had been lying outside her door. Seeing that it is gone, she tearfully but resolutely walks through a moonlit garden until she encounters her lover’s wife, who kills her with that knife.
Blues in the Night, 1941, Kay Grant (Betty Field), Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf), Lloyd Nolan (Del Davis), Brad Ames (Wallace Ford)
Kay was Del’s lover, yet she let him go to prison. He escapes and finds her at an rundown roadhouse, which he turns into a swank jazz-gambling joint. Kay wants Del back, but he is through with her. Brad, a has-been pianist, is her devoted “crippled stooge.” Del hires a small band, which Kay busts up by enticing Jigger, the leader, to fall for her and quit the group. Later, she tells him she only loves Del, and he cracks up. His bandmates find him, get him back on his feet, and they resume playing at Del’s club. One stormy night, Kay comes there. She and Del get into such an argument that he pulls out his gun. As Jigger fights him to protect Kay, the gun falls to the floor. She picks it up and shoots Del. Still hooked on Kay, Jigger wants to flee with her. But his friends warn him that, unless he gets over her, he will wind up “a nobody, a nothing” like Brad. Brad overhears this and goes to the car where Kay is waiting. He knows how to save Jigger: he drives fast in the rain until he intentionally crashes the car, killing Kay and himself. The band is “a single unit” once more.
The Maltese Falcon, 1941, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart)
See the above discussion about this film.
Street of Chance, 1942, Ruth Dillon (Claire Trevor), Frank Thompson (Burgess Meredith)
A woman is in love with a man who is wanted for murder – a killing she herself accidentally committed. When they had a relationship, unknown to either of them, he was an amnesiac. On regaining his memory, he gets the evidence that he is innocent and she is guilty. He also tells her the truth about his real self, including that he is married. When she realizes he is going to have her arrested, she pulls out a gun and points it at him. However, he grabs it and in the ensuing struggle, it goes off, mortally wounding her. As she dies, she asks him to say that he has always loved her and that what he said about being married wasn’t true. With the approval of a police detective standing nearby, he grants her wish. It might also be claimed that the woman isn’t an actual femme fatale. She kills a man unintentionally; she begs the man she loves to run away with her so that they can flee the police together; but when he rejects her plan, it is only as a last resort to save herself that she feels forced to shoot him.
There are few femme fatales in crime noirs from 1940-1942. The era in which femme fatales in crime noirs become frequent begins a couple of years later. These early femme fatales in crime noirs are predictably soft for the same historical explanation: the period in which femme fatales in crime noirs are both frequent and hard had not yet begun. The year of the change is 1944, when the Allied victory over the Axis was imminent. From this date forward into the postwar years, the demobilization of millions of men from the military and the relocation of women from jobholders to homemakers were significant unsettling social conditions. This is the historical context for the frequent appearance of femme fatales in crime noirs in general, and more specifically of hard femme fatales. The zenith year of the hard femme fatale in crime noir is 1947, when these male and female transitions are locked in place, but the new arrangements between the sexes, in terms of who goes to work and who minds the house, hadn’t yet become “natural,” either in American society or culture, such as movies.
Bibliography
Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale: Ready for Her Close-Up (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Foster Hirsch, Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir (Limelight Editions, 1999)
William Luhr, “The Maltese Falcon, the Detective Genre, and Film Noir” in William Luhr, (ed.), The Maltese Falcon. John Huston, director (Rutgers University Press, 1995)
Stanley Orr, Darkly Perfect World: Colonial Adventure, Postmodernism, and American Noir (The Ohio State University Press, 2010)
James Robert Parish and Michael R. Pitts, The Great Spy Pictures (The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1974)
Spencer Selby, The Dark City: The Film Noir (McFarland, 1984)
Michael S. Shull and David Eward Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 1937-1945: An Exhaustive Filmography of American Feature-Length Motion Pictures Relating to World War II (McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1996)
Sources for Examples of Hard Femmes Fatales (1944-1947) and the Soft Femmes Fatales (1940-1943)
Michael F. Keaney, Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003)
Spencer Selby, The Worldwide Film Noir Tradition (Sink Press, 2013)
Andrew Spicer, Historical Dictionary of Film Noir (The Scarecrow Press, 2010)
