Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity, which critics say was the first film to launch the craze for film noir. It is the perfect example of female exploitation and misinterpretations of women in the 1940s. Because a well-crafted film noir is not complete without an equally classic femme fatale. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Double Indemnity, actress Barbara Stanwyck plays the beautiful and deadly seductive Phyllis Dietrichson. A housewife who wanted only one thing, the death of her violent husband. To achieve this, she gently persuades the main character Walter Neff, who is an insurance salesman, to murder her. However, if you really listen, watch the movie carefully and analyze the dialogue Phyllis uses. She doesn't persuade Walter to kill her husband, she masterfully manipulates him into doing something she only thought she would do. Making it seem like Walter was the one who wanted him dead and was providing a means to achieve it. This is done by characterizing Phyllis from the beginning of the film as a seductive manipulator. Her first appearance on the stairs above Walter in a towel is the first look you get at her and her personality. But what is the personality of a femme fatale? David Crewe says: “By her sexuality: she is seductive and ravishing, and the hapless film noir protagonist is drawn to her like an insect to a spider's web. Deborah Walker also adds that: "The femme fatale is like a spider woman who uses physical seduction with deadly ambition: a drive for personal independence in which the man is no longer an object of romantic desire. As Janey Place argues, “What she’s looking for isn’t the man. It's another tool. What she is looking for is something for herself. The film immediately sexualizes Phyllis, so the audience believes one thing about her, without really knowing anything about her. Our eyes and Walter's are drawn to her curves and pert figure in the towel. Her tight clothes when dressed and her tempting anklet that Walter fantasizes about the most. His body is slowly scanned piece by piece and collected by us and Walter. Like a prized work of art in a gallery, Phyllis doesn't even have the dignity of being a human being. Just an object exploited and placed on a mantle to be ogled for hours with lust. So it's obvious that Walter isn't helping him out of the goodness of his heart, or for the money really, but out of pure desire. Crewe goes on to say: “Typically, critics view the femme fatale as the natural consequence of changing gender roles after the First World War, as women increasingly left the home to join the workforce. Male veterans, physically and psychologically injured during the war, returned home to find that women had gained financial and sexual independence after joining the workforce as part of the war effort on the home front . Men found these powerful women both seductive and frightening – the same ambivalence felt for the femme fatale. Changing gender roles and marriage were created by the millions of men who left their homes to go to war abroad. Once the war ended and men returned home, domesticated homes never truly returned to their normal state. In fact, this only further complicated the issue of urban anonymity andsexual confusion. Femme fatales were born from men's imagination of their anxieties as assertive women. Women who were not afraid to freely express their opinions or desires. Women who do not want to bow to male patriarchal supremacy. In the past, women were free to work without their husbands dictating their actions as women. Women were freed from their domestic roles and were able to think and act for themselves. In other words, they learned to work hard and earn a living without the help of a man. With all the outrageous and demeaning views of the American femme fatale, and the backlash women receive from being seen that way. You would think that the whole world, through cinema, had the same vision of women after the war, but that was not the case. In French film noir, Walker states that: "The situation in France was different and ultimately led to different constructions of the fatal figure. Post-war French noir certainly contains many negative female characters, most of whom are little bitches (double traitors and small-timers), gold-digging vamps, domineering (and ugly) matriarchs, or shrews (fish wives). ). But, although they invariably, unintentionally or intentionally, cause trouble for the French noir hero, these women are almost always minor characters, lacking the magnificent power, visual dominance, and narrative action of the mortal American fatalist. In this sense, when we “look for the woman” in classic French film noir, the lady more or less disappears. It's one thing to be called a manipulative, deadly spider. It's another to make a femme fatale of French noir so insignificant that her presence is barely noticeable. That his image is so disrespected, devoid of any type of importance and control, is hardly necessary to prove his point to a country through cinema. However, what makes French film noir more unique is not the harsh labels, but the different desires and goals of the films. Walker goes on to say that: "Although the French fatale may be ambitious and unscrupulous, whether she seeks to ruin or murder an older, unattractive husband, or her lover's wife, or to pin murder on a innocent victim. What most often distinguishes her from the American figure is her overarching and unshakable emotional attachment to a male protagonist. The French fatale, like the tragic or even demonic fatale, is almost always a woman in love. Whose fundamental goal is to have and/or keep your man. Her lover is, almost without exception, the ultimate object of desire; it is not simply a tool to be used, abused and discarded in the quest for power and independence. Even though the French femme fatale has the same personality as the American femme fatale, their desires are completely opposite. This is another simple way to encourage independent women. That a man is always needed and should be the real object a woman should strive for, not independence from him. However, at the time of the war, French women had no real reason to flee their families, unlike American women since their families were not as affected by the war. French women were eager to return home so they could rebuild their broken families. However, this does not excuse the fact that women there were not exploited in other ways. American women slowly began to gain their political freedom by being able to vote in 1919. While French women still struggled to escape male domination andobtained this privilege years later, in 1944. Yet their wives were still retained as minor individuals. thanks to the Civil Code and was more or less considered to occupy positions of power. Alongside this, a number of French film noirs were created to reflect the loss of male pride due to the war. These fears were directed toward French women, making them what Deborah Walker calls "scapegoats for the shame of a nation." Creating women who sleep with men for money, power, secrets and pleasure. So the fear of independent domestic life was not the fear the French had of their women, it was sexual infidelity with the enemy. This was seen as the ultimate betrayal of their nation. After the Liberation, punishments for such crimes were as cruel as shaving the heads of women who collaborated with the Germans. But what happens if the femme fatale doesn't follow the character's rules? A bad interpretation of the women and the femme fatale of Double Indemnity would be the flashbacks of memories from a single point of view. Richard Armstrong explains that: “Phyllis Dietrichson is rotten because we see her through the eyes of Walter Neff and investigator Barton Keyes. Memories can be distorted. These are only interpretations, they do not constitute a case and are not relevant if you have the facts. It is ontologically valid to say that the world continues to exist while your eyes are closed. But when you open them, you interpret what you see not objectively but for yourself. As long as we are only shown one side of the story, we can only interpret the information we are given. Phyllis' story was never shown, only fragments of memories could be placed through her dialogue but enough for us to see the facts and truth of her life. For example, since we were from Walter's point of view, we knew how much he desired Phyllis and how easily he could succumb to her charms. He was weak-minded and full of greed, which is what led him to murder. Without knowing the truth about Phyllis's life, we cannot call her a true femme fatale without her perspective. For all we know, she might have good reason to want her husband dead, other than her being mistreated by him. If Phyllis' point of view isn't shown, it leaves things open for her character not to be the woman we think she is. However, this film represents a man's fantasies about women like Phyllis, based on his actions and appearance, not his past pains or struggles. With this in mind, Mark Jancovich believes that: "The femme fatale is therefore meant to function as a demonization of the self-employed working woman, at a time when there was a concerted effort to persuade women to give up the jobs they had occupied during the war period. war and return to their roles as wives and mothers in the domestic sphere. »Phyllis Dietrichson's femme fatale character, and indeed all femme fatale characters, are a direct attack on women who have tried to escape the housewife life. Men fought back by creating a femme fatale image to discourage viewers from seeing a specific type of woman. She is a woman breaking away from the system that controls her life and her actions towards men. Phyllis wishes her husband were dead, nothing more. It was the actions of one man, and one man alone, that sparked the murder. In the end, they were both doomed to go to the grave together, victims of their own desires.