filmnoirstudies.com's no place for a woman

[souzakh]

 I just checked out the resource http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/ and read the essay no place for a woman.  It provides great insight Into film the war in the role that women and families play and the plots. Check it out…http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/essays/no_place.asp

 

In a disturbing scene from Dark Passage (1947), a back alley plastic surgeon tells Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart), "There's no such thing as courage. There's only fear, the fear of getting hurt and the fear of dying. That's why human beings live so long." He is

looking straight at Parry and — through the use of the subjective camera — straight at the audience. His statement is especially striking because it dismisses courage as a myth soon after World War II, rejecting a basic cultural belief that all of America and all of Hollywood had just spent four years trying to build up. Such an attack on society's (and Hollywood's) most cherished values is characteristic of film noir, and perhaps its favorite target is the most fundamental value of all — the family.

[Chris Pierce]

I thought you meant that site was "No place for a woman."

Looool

[deepnoirjazz]

Excellent point.  Film Noir is disturbing and clearly meant to be.  I found this interesting quote in the Noir  Wiki:

 

Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, unsublimated sex and murder most foul.

Donald Marshman, Life (August 25, 1947)^[

[Chris A]

 I just checked out the resource http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/ and read the essay no place for a woman.  It provides great insight Into film the war in the role that women and families play and the plots. Check it out…http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/essays/no_place.asp

 

In a disturbing scene from Dark Passage (1947), a back alley plastic surgeon tells Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart), "There's no such thing as courage. There's only fear, the fear of getting hurt and the fear of dying. That's why human beings live so long." He is

looking straight at Parry and — through the use of the subjective camera — straight at the audience. His statement is especially striking because it dismisses courage as a myth soon after World War II, rejecting a basic cultural belief that all of America and all of Hollywood had just spent four years trying to build up. Such an attack on society's (and Hollywood's) most cherished values is characteristic of film noir, and perhaps its favorite target is the most fundamental value of all — the family.

Noir ripped the front off our society to expose the seedy underbelly.  Women were classified into the femme fatale, the gun moll, and the girl next door.  The femme fatale was like the ancient Greek siren from mythology.  All a response to the role of women on the home front during the war.  No surprise that many of the private investigator hero types are war veterans now having to protect themselves against women trying to exploit them.  At once a biting commentary on our own war (and post-war) culture as well as gender roles.  Women were either causing some type of castration-anxiety for the men (the heroes) or they were on the verge of losing that innocence and becoming either a danger for men or in need of being rescued by them.