by Bobby B. Paul

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 09, 2008

People talk about film noir and femme fatales as nearly a synonymous term. In reality film noir covers a wide range of films most of which lacked the femme fatale. Bogart's Key Largo is a classic example of such a film. The original femme fatale characters portrayed an outer shell of Victorian propriety and submissiveness. Only when the plot reveals them do we see the true colors. This is in stark contrast to Lauren Bacall's character in Key Largo. In this film, Bacall is a woman of inner strength, but it is so apparent is this strength, she seems almost as much a threat to the criminals as anybody. In fact one could argue that Bogart makes the true femme fatale presence, being a person who plays himself weak and selfish only to buy time to make the right move. Reverse Bogart's role entirely, including the gender, and you have a villainous femme fatale. This in part makes Key Largo a classic film noir piece although it just doesn't fit the standard definition.

Often people do not want to include such films in the noir world because they come up with less than dark endings. But the story telling, plots, and film styles all fit the genre. What's usually missing in the classic femme fatale? The fascination of the femme fatale is not its prevalence in film, but rather its rarity. It is a bit surprising, looking at the classic femme fatale characters of the 1950's in films like DOA or Double Indemnity, to understand why the character wasn't used more often, given its power in these films.
Part of the reason is that the character, in the classic definition, enters as a surprise, a truly unexpected plot twist. Duplicating this and making it fresh each time is a difficult task. As director M. Knight Shyamalan should be able to explain, but probably can't, man does not live by plot twist alone. Removing the surprise element in defining the femme fatale, we expand it and see an evolution of the character as an intrinsically strong, very self-interested woman, who is not only willing to compete in a formerly seen male world, but is determined to dominate and subdue the men in it. This has been the evolution of the femme fatale.
The influence of the femme fatale has been in directors who recognize not how the character reveals itself in the plot but in the character itself. These become the women we love to hate and we can find them all over the place, not just in noir. Disney seems to use this character so often by creating villainous women in its tales you begin to wonder

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