Historical Context of Film Noir

While film has evolved to a point where female characters can carry a film and not be relegated to the role of “damsel in distress” and “femme fatale,” this wasn’t always the case: in fact, most female roles involved portraying one of these two stereotypes.

While a female lead could feature in a film noir, and even garner critical reception, Carla Kungl notes that the refusal to adhere to a traditional feminine role, especially regarding that of a housewife, was often seen as a failure of the female detective as a woman (Kungl, 2006).

The roles that a female could play in film noir decreased severely after WWII, which called for predominantly male protagonists. It’s especially noteworthy that, “In Hollywood’s darker film noir, the female detective became a rarity, and in the few films in which she appeared, she was most often a housewife trying to clear her husband’s name” (Gates, 2009).

In fact, any woman who wasn’t portrayed as a housewife was often relegated to the role of femme fatale, which, “was an attempt to demonize the independent woman of the war years” (Jancovich, 2011). This affected other areas of film and television as well: even feminine Walt Disney characters were thrust into roles upheld by standard film noir of the time, as “Daisy Duck, an ignorant femme fatale oblivious to the damage caused by her sexuality, and Pauline, a spoilt and absentminded dame, both possess certain characteristics of the femme fatale” (Balint, 2014).

Even the males of film noir were often relegated to specific roles regarding that encouraged social isolation; honourable figures who never allowed their real emotions to shine through, in an effort to place themselves over the females of the genre (Moustakas, 2004).

All of these excessively boxed-in characters, especially when regarding the feminine figures of film noir, harmed the dramatic progression of the genre, and it’s only today that we are now seeing unique female protagonists in film.