the best film noir femmes fatales

    I hate these kinds of lists, much of the time anyway. But since I’m on a bit of a list binge these days, insofar as compiling them, I thought I’d share a few thoughts and, more to the point, create my own, highly subjective, ergo highly arguable, list of the best femmes fatales in noir history.

    Hitchcock once famously said that a thriller is only as good as its villain, and likewise it’s not too much of a stretch to say that a film noir is only as good as its femme fatale. Aside: I’ve noticed that the phenomenon of the femme fatale in the classic noir era [1] peaked in the late Forties and dropped off around 1950. Though indeed there are exceptions, I’m hard pressed to name a lot of classic femmes fatales that appeared after 1950. Even the greatest noirs of that era – Touch of Evil, Night and the City, Kiss Me Deadly, Sweet Smell of Success – to cite just some of the best known exemplars, lack a true femme fatale [2] (there’s at least one notable mid-1950s exception, see below).

    The fatal woman isn’t really new, much less a creation of mid Twentieth Century male fantasies (and fears). You could say she’s been around as long as human history and storytelling has been around [3]. The femme fatale runs rampant in opera, for example, but the best-known incarnation is surely Carmen. Indeed she more or less set the mold for the modern femme fatale, if we define ‘modern’ as beginning in the late Nineteenth Century. Be that as it may, for better or worse, in the popular imagination the image of the femme fatale is pretty much cemented definitively in mid- and late 1940s crime and thriller movies.
    The noir literature then is voluminous and there’s almost as much written on the femme fatale as that of film noir itself (aren’t the two really the same thing? Well, maybe, and maybe not). In any case, aside from purely cinematic takes, feminist, behaviorist, romanticist, Freudian, supernatural, socio-economic, political, and literary analyses have surged forth.

    Comment: in the films cited below, most of them anyway, it’s the role the actress is best remembered for. Seldom, if ever, did the respective actresses shine so well as they did in their essays on the dark woman. Stanwyck and Gardner are a couple of exceptions who had substantial careers and other roles just as memorable. Second comment: as opined in my post on ‘greatest movies’ elsewhere on this blog, at the top level – in the case of femmes fatales, the best twenty or so – the standings are pretty much interchangeable, and as such one shouldn’t make too much out of the specific rankings. Still, without further ado here then are my choices for the best femmes fatales in noir history [4].


“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man”

    1) Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). Body Heat. Turner's Matty Walker is ensconced in the noir pantheon as one of the deadliest of the deadly, and perhaps the most remorseless – and relentless – of them all. Turner’s wondrous performance can be appreciated for its many layers and subtle touches, all the more miraculous considering Body Heat was her first starring role in a major film.

    2) Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). Out of the past. As Out of the Past’s reputation has grown over the years to where it vies with Double Indemnity as the consensus quintessential noir, so has Jane Greer’s essay as the incredibly manipulative Kathie, sometimes kept woman, sometimes wayward waif, always very sexy, and very dangerous. Miss Greer had a fairly solid career as an actress but never reached these heights again.

    3) Vera (Ann Savage). Detour. Vera isn’t evil so much as repellent, both physically and morally, and utterly opportunistic, so her lofty rank may be a little generous. Still, she’s a one-of-a-kind villain and a force to be reckoned with. That fingernails on the blackboard voice is cringeworthy just thinking about it, but her tubercular cough engenders at least some sympathy.

   4) Lulu (Louise Brooks). Pandora’s Box.  Brooks’ Lulu is a decade or so outside the classic noir era but she merits a place simply because she set the template for all the cinematic femmes fatales that were to follow, though Theda Bara’s ‘vamp’ of a decade earlier might merit a mention as a precursor.  
  
 5) Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Double Indemnity. For a long time Stanwyck’s proletarian schemer was the default choice for the best noir femme fatale, but changing tastes and greater visibility of other films have caused her to slip a rung or two, but she’s still pretty competitive for a spot in the top ten.

   6) Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor). The Killing. No compilation of noir fatale femmes would be complete without at least one Marie Windsor character, and this one’s a doozie. In the noirverse Marie Windsor is probably best known for her essays in Narrow Margin and The Killing, but for sheer mean-spiritedness and nastiness it’s no contest. She’s simply unforgettable as Elijah Cook Jr.’s trophy wife from Hell. Her duplicitousness, greed, and do-whatever-it-takes attitude causes all sorts of problems and leads directly to the film’s violent denouement.

   7) Paula Craig (Janis Carter). Framed.  It was pretty much a toss-up between Miss Carter’s deadly turns in Framed and Night Editor. She more or less plays the same character in both films but I went with Framed for Paula Craig’s utter ruthlessness and callousness: she’s willing to sacrifice two, maybe three, men to satisfy her lust for money. Janis Carter is one of the true unsung (anti)-heroines in the noir hall of infamy, and she remains to be rediscovered. Confined to B movie purgatory for most of her career, she disappeared from the movies entirely in the early 1950s. Look for her also as the temptress in The Woman on Pier 13. 
    See also Leslie Brooks' Claire Hanneman in Blonde Ice. Her murderous female is almost a carbon copy of the two Carter roles mentioned above. Both women specialized in B movies, and moreover, Leslie Brooks even bears a vague physical resemblance to Janis Carter, and likewise remains an under-the-radar noir vixen.

     8) Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie). Decoy. One of the most irredeemable bad girls in the canon is Margot Shelby. The near forgotten Jean Gillie does a brilliant job of projecting the woman’s malevolence, obscured by a veneer of affluence and civility. Once we’ve heard her maniacal laugh when she finds the loot, can we ever forget it?

     9) Katharine ‘Kitty’ March (Joan Bennett). Scarlet Street. A bit of a sleeper, this one. Like Claire Trevor, Joan Bennet is under-appreciated as a noir actress, and this is her definitive role. Kitty March is as manipulative as they come and Bennett’s interpretation almost makes her a sympathetic character.

     10) Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor). Murder, My Sweet.  Among noir’s dangerous women Claire Trevor has never really gotten her due as she tends to be overshadowed by other actresses of the era, of both a noir and other persuasion. Thus her femmes fatales don’t quite have the high profile of the likes of Kathie Moffat, Matty Walker, or Kitty Collins. But her noir credentials are right up there with the best, having appeared in such classics as Born to Kill, Raw Deal, Key Largo, Crack-Up and of course Murder My Sweet, as well as the quasi-noir Borderline. But it’s the Helen/Velma character that takes pride of place for spitefulness and evil. Hers is perhaps the greater evil simply because she’s more or less sane, or at least more sane than her counterpart in Born to Kill.
   Trivia: Trevor nabbed an Oscar for her turn as the alcoholic floozy in Key Largo. It’s one of the few instances in which a noir won an Academy Award in a major category.

     11) Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) The Killers. Along with Rita Hayworth in Gilda *, Ava Gardner’s Kitty is my choice as the best visual incarnation of the femme fatale when she wears that slinky black dress. This was her first major role and she hits it out of the park. She even gets to sing a tune, using her own voice!

   * However, for conniving and evil I prefer Hayworth’s blondized Elsa Bannister in Lady From Shanghai.

     12) Jacqueline Gibson (Jean Brooks). The Seventh Victim. Jacqueline Gibson is a most unusual entry in this compilation in that her cinematic pedigree is supernatural horror and not the crime thriller. Some might even argue that Victim isn’t film noir at all. So be it. Then again, it has most of the noir tropes. But make no mistake, there’s a fatale quality about Jacqueline: several dead bodies along the way prove it. Then there’s her goth, vampire chic look: Cleopatra flapper wig, dark fur coat, somnambulist visage.**

   ** Brooks reprised the Jacqueline character, sort of, with her her black drenched garb and lugubrious persona, in the (post)WW2 exploitation thriller Women in the Night (1948), in which she plays the exotic Maya. Women in the Night, by the way, was Brooks' last film.  

  13) The Princess (María Casares). Orphée. Much like the previously cited Seventh Victim, Orphée is not a true film noir but rather a supernatural fantasy with a few noirish touches, not least of them the character of The Princess, who is no less than the Angel of Death herself. The role is played to icy perfection by the great María Casares, and her all black look makes her a natural for the femme fatale hall of fame. Indeed the messenger of death is about as fatale a character as can be. See also Gloria Holden’s lesbian vampire in the creepy 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter, which might be seen as a warmup for the character of The Princess in Orphée.

     14) Lily MacBeth (Ruth Roman). Joe MacBeth. Yes, I'm getting quite a bit over my usual top ten limit, but I just caught Joe MacBeth again and simply can't leave out Ruth Roman's brittle take as Lady MacBeth. In fact I can't imagine a better choice to play the overly ambitious femme in Twentieth Century packaging. The film just gets better upon repeated viewings, and Roman's performance is a treasure. She remains a much under-appreciated actress, and even considering she was in her share of noirs, this may well be her darkest, and most evil, character. 

[1] The consensus bookend years are 1941-1958, though I’m quite a bit more restrictive myself as I’d put the classic era as roughly 1944-1952.

[2] In the case of Kiss Me Deadly the psychotic Lily/Gabrielle might fit the mold, if we interpret the definition liberally. On the other hand, she’s not classic fatale material in that she lacks the Ava Gardner-esque uptown glamour and style we usually associate with the character. By the way, when I opine above that “ … I’m hard pressed to name a lot of classic femme fatales that appeared after 1950,” I’m talking in the context of the generally accepted classic era that ran until about 1959. This is not necessarily my classic era, see above. On the other hand, the films of neo-noir, or post-noir, or postmodern noir, take your pick, are considered for this exercise, ergo the explanation for Matty Walker’s inclusion and lofty ranking.

[3] The first usage of the term in the English language is rather vague, but sources tend to go with the 1880s or 1890s, though some opt for the early Twentieth Century – in either case exact references are difficult to come by.
    Aside: The mid-Twentieth Century film version of the fatale femme can be seen as a more modern variant of the enchantress, sorceress or witch, characters which have been around it seems since time immemorial. Some of the better known examples from antiquity are Circe and Medea.
 
[4] But what about Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falson, you might ask? As brought to life in Mary Astor’s brilliant performance, Brigid fits most of the tropes, but as hinted above, my rather arbitrary definition of the noir chronology begins around 1944, and Falcon dates from 1941. And besides, though it has the requisite private detective, urban milieu, and much the look of noir, I don’t really consider Falcon to be film noir at all, but rather a tough, very well told detective story. 

Further reading: Mark Jancovich, “Female monsters: Horror, the ‘Femme Fatale’ and World War II,” European Journal of American Culture, v27 n2 (July 2008), pp133-149; Samantha Jane Lindop,  Femmes, filles, and hommes: postfeminism and the fatal(e) figure in contemporary American film noir. PhD Thesis, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland, 2014.