Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

significant discussion of film noir’s socio-cultural meanings rotates round noir’s
demonstration of gender and sexuality, as Stephen Neale notes:
For many commentators, the principal hallmarks of noir include a distinctive
treatment of sexual desire and sexual relationships, a distinctive array of male and
female character types, and a distinctive repertoire of male and female traits, ideals,
characteristics and forms of behaviour. For some these elements can be related
directly to contemporary social and cultural trends and factors; they help not only
to define noir, but also to account for its existence. (Neale 2000:151)
Some further examples, such as Ellen Norson (Cathy O’Donnell) in Side Street
(1950) or Nettie (Colleen Gray) in Kiss of Death (1947), also portray women who appear
as antithetical to the femme fatale, often appearing in the same film, as a figure of the
innocent homemaker or playing the role of femme attrapée or domestic menial. This also
suggests how difficult it is for film noir to represent an upright and secure family life;
conversely, the form embodies the compulsion that exists to transgress the boundaries of
family ties. 52 Femmes fatales such as Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson (Double
Indemnity), Lana Turner’s Cora Smith (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Ava Gardner’s
Kitty Collins (The Killers) or Rita Hayworth’s Gilda Farrell (Gilda) are all the exaltation of
a legendary femininity. The way they exert their control over men shows a gender role
reversal which became very frequent in noir productions. Harvey also echoes this point of
view:
Despite the ritual punishment of acts of transgression, the vitality with which these
acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be
contained. Narrative resolutions cannot recuperate their subversive significance.
(Harvey 1998:39)
It is not surprising, then, to see all these noir women, such as Kathie (Out of the
Past) or Cora, with their liveliness, wield a much more powerful hold on our imagination
and our memory. Other examples of female-dominated noirs are those involving Laura
Hunt (Gene Tierney) in Laura, Mildred Pierce in Mildred Pierce, Gilda (Rita Hayworth) in
Gilda, Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), or
Nora Prentiss (Ann Sheridan) in Nora Prentiss (1947), for example. As Helen Hanson
notes, these productions actually contain central female characters who were “involved in
52 This is what happens in Luchino Visconti’s neo-realist Obsessione (1942), which was an unauthorised film
version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
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