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where have all the good girls gone: the role of women in "scarlet street" (1945) by tracy taylor In her essay "Film Noir, Voice Over, and the Femme Fatale", Karen Hollinger discusses films noir as if the sole purpose of the entire genre was to dissect gender roles and interplay. Hollinger states that the film noir's "repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to probe the nature of sexual difference, foregrounds a societal failure to resolve the contradictions inherent in conventional configurations of sexuality and gender difference." (Hollinger 245)
If films noir are indeed the windows into men's anxieties over women's changing roles, what can we discover about women from Scarlet Street? Most prominently, none of the three female characters in Fritz Lang's film has a single redeemable quality between them. Adele, Chris Cross' wife, seems to exist solely to establish audience empathy for Cross' infidelity with her relentlessly shrewish behavior. Significantly, Adele reveres the prominently-displayed portrait of her supposedly dead first husband, in essence demonstrating that she has never been "faithful" in her heart to Chris. Adele is wife as ball-and-chain. Give a wife money and she'll take control. Watch out, guys: don't let the little lady handle the checkbook! Millie, Kitty's girlfriend and roommate, appears innocent, but she is in fact a willing co-conspirator in Kitty's callous subterfuge against Chris. Ultimately, Millie's courtroom testimony helps to convict Kitty's boyfriend Johnny of a crime he did not commit but for which he is executed. The message is clear: a powerful, desirous woman means death for the reckless noir male. Finally, there is the main female character, the femme fatale, Kitty. Ruthlessly duplicitous, Kitty skillfully manipulates the hapless Chris for money and a posh apartment while appearing to be helpless and subservient. In fact, she is simply a younger version of Adele. Kitty reinforces a primal fear of the noir male: that sexy, powerful women are dangerous and destructive. To fall obsessively in love with such a woman, to give up control, will most certainly have fatal consequences. If films noir are indeed a source of gender study as Hollinger argues, then it can be said that the women of Scarlet Street demonstrate how the contemporary male mentality had become both fearful of and fascinated by the strong, sexually autonomous woman. (Most articles referenced appear in Silver, Alain, ed. Film Noir Reader, Limelight Editions, 1996.) Copyright © 2003 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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essence, Hollinger argues, the noir male was preoccupied with
questioning his own dark desires for the "naughty girl", the sexually
enigmatic woman. Enigmas are unpredictable, uncontrollable. In order
to maintain control, the male must "know her", master her. Without
control over his "womenfolk", the noir male's masculinity is
weakened, his potency dissipated.