You might want to look at my other post, above, and read it carefully:
I already read your previous post and was not impressed by your argument. To put such a tight definition on a class of films that were not intended to be so closely related in theme, let alone a paint-by-numbers plot, when they first came out is anachronistic.
And you can stow the condescension any time. This is just an IMDB board.
He was not that way to begin with, but quickly became that under her influence. That's the whole point of a femme fatale: she changes him from a basically decent person into a scheming criminal. He had, until that time, been a respected and highly competent insurance agent who was a straight shooter.
I'm going to give you your own advice right back (I just rewatched Double Indemnity, by the way) and suggest you rewatch the film. In the scene where Walter gets his foot in the door and first meets Phyllis, he is decidedly shady. He is also the one who does all the in-film killing (though it's strongly hinted she killed her husband's first wife). He also shoots her after she can't shoot him. And he sleeps with her step-daughter, which Phyllis definitely doesn't want or manipulate him into doing. As he admits to Robinson's character toward the end, he was no innocent in the matter.
Again, her allure changes him, and she complains about how little she feels for her husband, and how confining her marriage is. She is the central reason for his decline and fall. And, as in Out of the Past, he ends up dead.
Frank hits on Cora
incessantly in the beginning. For the first part of the film, she doesn't even want him around and begs her husband not to hire him. If she'd had her way, he wouldn't have stuck around long enough to help kill her husband. And again, as a result of his actions, she ends up dead.
Plus, as he himself admits at the end, just because he didn't intend to kill her, doesn't mean he isn't already guilty of murder. He's the central reason for his own downfall. Noir films are good modern examples of Classical Tragedy and Tragic Heroes with fatal flaws.
Again, he is initially trying to escape his past (thus the title of the film) and is planning to settle down with Jane; but then the whole thing with the femme fatale kicks in, and she brings out the worst in him. One can argue whether these men are inherently bad vs. flawed and potentially corruptible. But they usually seem to start out O.K. and then things spiral out of control. And there is always an external trigger (an object of temptation, and sometimes also a powerful criminal.) that gets things started.
Kathie is without a doubt bad to the bone, worse even than Phyllis in Double Indemnity and more like Elsa in The Lady from Shanghai (who does fit this pattern and is willing to pull the trigger on her own gun), or even Kitty in The Killers. And she does actually kill Jeff in the end when he tries to do the right thing and redeem himself.
Even so, Jeff doesn't get into that mess initially because of Kathie. He knew when Whit sent him down to Mexico that he wasn't finding her to deliver a fruit basket. The corruption starts before she walks in out of the sun.
No, they are only in the former, not the latter. Karen Allen's character (Marion), Indy's ex-girlfriend is not a corrupting temptress. He is already looking for the Ark of the Covenant, and he stops by to see her on the way to his destination. It's the Nazis (the external factor) that complicate both their lives, and they end up fighting the Nazis together. And the ending is a reasonably good one, not a tragic one.
Marion may not be a femme fatale, but Elsa in the third film sure is.
Also, he doesn't just stop in to see Marion. She has the medallion he needs and he's there either to buy, seduce or steal it from her.
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ZurichGnome
8 years ago
pt100 was actually correct, and you don't seem to know much about the classic noir period in American cinema. Your definition is apparently so broad as to include any dark crime drama. The classic noir was eventually expanded into much broader realms (e.g, including neo-noir, psychological thrillers, etc.); but this represents a huge watering down of the original concept.
The term Film Noir was originally coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946 to apply specifically to some Hollywood crime films of the 1940s. It has since been broadened so much as to become essentially meaningless, covering nearly any dark crime thriller. But the original definition had the key elements to which pt100 referred earlier.
And the key point about the femme fatale, which you seem to have missed, is that they are not necessarily horribly evil and bent on destroying a man; they are instead a trigger of the downward spiral, usually through sexual attraction/temptation.
In all the films that pt100 mentioned, the woman is the trigger--even if unwillingly--of the subsequent downfall of the protagonist. Without her character being there to start things rolling downhill, there would be no plot. In some cases the woman is just plain no good, as in Out of the Past. In others, such as The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity, she is the temptress who either makes a basically good guy turn bad or brings out the pre-existing dark side of the guy.
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SixtiesHoldout
8 years ago
Yes, you and pt100 (and a few others here) are correct. Unfortunately, many people have broadened the category as originally defined to include almost any crime drama. You're right, this has caused the term "noir" to lose its meaning. The original meaning of femme fetale was based partly on elements of Greek tragedy, such as the Sirens who tried to lure Odysseus to his doom.
Also, although I generally respect and agree with Roger Ebert, he did tend to throw terms around carelessly sometimes. He was speaking in the broadest possible terms, not in a technical, cinematic sense.
❇ If you can remember the '60s, then you probably weren't there. ❇
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