Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir classic, Double Indemnity, which critics believe was the first film to kick off the film noir craze. She is the perfect example of female exploitation and misinterpretations of women in the 1940s. Because a well-made film noir isn't complete without an equally classic femme fatale. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Double Indemnity, it was actress Barbara Stanwyck who played the beautiful and deadly seductive Phyllis Dietrichson. A housewife who wanted one thing, the death of her abusive husband. To achieve this, he sweetly convinces the main character Walter Neff, who is an insurance salesman, to kill him. However, if you really listen, watch the film carefully and analyze the dialogue Phyllis uses. She doesn't convince Walter to kill her husband, she brilliantly manipulates him into doing something he had only thought about doing. Making it seem like Walter was the one who wanted him dead and provided a way to make it happen. This is done by characterizing Phyllis from the beginning of the film as a seductive manipulator. Her first appearance on the stairs above Walter wearing a towel is the first glimpse you get of her and her personality. But what is the personality of a femme fatale? David Crewe states that: "With her sexuality: she is seductive and entrancing, and the hapless film noir protagonist is drawn to her like an insect to a spider's web." Deborah Walker further adds that: “The femme fatale is like a spider-woman who uses physical seductiveness with lethal ambition: a drive for personal independence within which the man is no longer a romantic object of desire. As Janey Place argues, “what she's looking for isn't the man. It's another tool. What she seeks is something for herself. The film immediately sexualizes Phyllis, so the audience believes one thing about her, without actually knowing anything about her. Our eyes and Walter's are drawn to her curves and flirtatious figure in the towel. Her tight clothes once dressed and her tempting anklet that Walter fantasizes about the most. His body is slowly scrutinized piece by piece and welcomed by us and Walter. Like a precious work of art in a gallery, Phyllis is not even given the dignity of being human. Just an object exploited and put on a cape to be looked at for hours with lust. So it's clear that Walter isn't helping her out of the kindness of his heart, or money really, but out of pure lust. Crewe goes on to state that: “Generally, critics view the femme fatale as the natural consequence of changing gender roles after the First World War, when women increasingly left the home to join the workforce. Male veterans, physically and mentally wounded during the war, returned home to find that women had gained greater financial and sexual independence by joining the workforce as part of the war effort on the home front. Men found such powerful women both seductive and frightening—the same ambivalence felt about the femme fatale. The shift in gender roles and marriage was created by millions of men leaving their homes to go to war. Once the war was over and the men returned home, the set of domesticated houses never truly returned to its normal state. In fact, it only seemed to further complicate the issue of urban anonymity and sexual confusion. Femme fatales arise from the imagination of men from their anguish as assertive women. Women who were not afraidto freely express their opinions or express their wishes. Women who don't want to bow to male patriarchal supremacy. Women were once free to work without their husbands being there to dictate their actions as women. Women were freed from the roles of domestic life and were able to think and act for themselves. In other words, they were learning to work hard and make a living without a man to help them. With all the outrageous and demeaning opinions of the American femme fatale and the backlash women have received from being viewed this way. You would think that the whole world through cinema had this same vision of women after the war, but this was not the case. In French noir films, 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 petites garces (two small, treacherous men), gold-digging vampires, domineering (and ugly) matriarchs, or mégères (fish wives). ). But while they invariably, unwittingly or intentionally, cause trouble for the French noir hero, these women are almost always minor characters, lacking the magnificent power, visual command, and narrative agency of the deadly American fatale. In this sense, when one “looks for the woman” in classic French noir, the lady more or less vanishes.” It's one thing to be labeled a deadly, manipulative spider. It's another to make a French noir femme fatale so insignificant that her presence is barely noticeable. Having one's image so despised, devoid of any kind of importance and control, is almost not necessary to prove something to a country through cinema. However, what makes French film noir most unique is not the harsh labels, but their different desires and goals in the films. Walker goes on to say that, “Though the French fatale can be ambitious and unscrupulous, whether she wants to ruin or kill an older, unattractive husband, or her lover's wife, or pins a murder on an innocent victim. What most often distinguishes her from the American figure is her predominant and unshakable emotional attachment to the male protagonist. The French fatal as a tragic or even demonic fatal is almost always a woman in love. Whose fundamental objective is to win and/or keep her 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 pursuit of 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 women to be independent. That a man is still needed and should be the very real object to which a woman should aspire, not independence from him. However, at the time of the war, French women had no real reason to flee their families, unlike American women, as their families were not as affected by the war. French women were eager to return home to their homes so they could rebuild their shattered families. This however does not excuse the fact that women there were not exploited differently. American women slowly began to gain their political freedom by being able to vote in 1919. While French women still struggled to escape man's rule and gained the privilege years later in 1944. Yet, their women were also still held down as individuals minors. thanks to the Civil Code and was no longer considered to be responsible for holding positions of power. Along with this, numerous French noir films were createdto reflect the loss of male pride due to the war. Such fears were directed at French women, making them what Deborah Walker calls “scapegoats for a nation's shame.” Creating women who sleep with men for money, power, secrets and pleasure. So, the fear of independence from domestic life was not the fear the French had of their women, it was sexual infidelity with the enemy. It was considered 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? It would be the misinterpretation of women and the femme fatale of Double Indemnityflashback of memories only in one point of view. Richard Armstrong explains that: “Phyllis Dietrichson is rotten because we see her through the eyes of Walter Neff and detective Barton Keyes. Memories can be distorted. They are only an interpretation, they are not documentation and are irrelevant if you know 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 inserted into her dialogue, but enough to let us see the facts and truth of her life. For example, since we were in Walter's point of view, we knew how much he wanted Phyllis and how easily she could succumb to his charms. He was weak minded and full of greed, this is what led him to murder. Without knowing the truth about Phyllis' life ourselves, we cannot label her a true femme fatale without her point of view. For all we know, she may have a good reason for wanting her husband dead, other than being abused by him. If Phyllis' point of view isn't shown, it leaves things open for her character to not be the woman we think she is. However, this film represents a male's fantasies about women like Phyllis based on her actions and appearance, not her past pain or struggles. With this in mind, Mark Jancovich believes that: “It is therefore argued that the femme fatale operates as a demonization of the independent working woman at a time when there was a concerted effort to persuade women to abandon the jobs they had taken during the period war and to return to their role as wives and mothers within 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 life of a domestic housewife. Men responded by creating the femme fatale image of women to discourage viewers from seeing a specific type of woman. Which is a woman who breaks away from the system that controls her life and her actions towards man. Phyllis wishes her husband were dead, nothing more. It was the acts of one man, and one man alone, that set the wheels of murder in motion. Ultimately, they were both doomed to go to the grave together as victims of their own selfish desires. Dick Bernard states that: “If the criminal were a woman, elegantly dressed and well coiffed, she could be a noir icon: a femme fatale with a gun leaning against her Jean Louis dress. The act was expected to result in his death or imprisonment; all that mattered was that it was done in a great way.” This is how Hollywood manages to distract us from the truth about the femme fatale issue. If the.