Forgive me if I’ve incorrectly pluralized homme fatale in the title.
I’ve been watching quite a few classic noir films for the past month or so, and I’m curious about the films where the roles of femme fatale and luckless schmoe are reversed. The first and only film which springs to my mind is 1956’s A Kiss Before Dying, but considering film noir is such a loosely-defined category and that I’ve only seen a fraction of the films out there, I’m sure there are many more with a black widower figure. If we confine the selection to the classic noir period–beginning, roughly, in the early-to-mid '40s and ending in '58 with Touch of Evil–can you think of other films with a homme fatale and a female protagonist?
Charles Boyer again portrayed a duplicitous, smarmy continental lover type in Hold Back The Dawn, and this time his victim was Olivia de Havilland. Same premise as Gaslight, almost: he pretends to be something he’s not in order to marry the naive heroine so that he can advance toward his real goal.
I’m not sure. While he’s a flawed and bitter man, he’s ultimately a decent person and ends up doing what’s considered to be the right thing. A reluctant hero, maybe, but not destructive.
On the other hand, I do think his Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place is a better example of a homme fatale (even if I, personally, think that film is more of a relationship picture than it is noir).
The first character who springs to mind for me is Max de Winter from the Rebecca – more so in the novel than the movie because of certain plot changes made for the film adaptation.
I think it was here in CS that I once read about a modern film that was a noir style mystery with all the stock roles…but with the genders switched. So the hardboiled detective was a woman, the helpless client was a man, and there was of course a homme fatale. Unfortunately I don’t remember the title.
It seems to me that most “Byronic heroes” like Heathcliffe could be considered homme fatales, but I can’t think of any examples of this archetype in classic noir films.
I haven’t seen it, but based on the description, I don’t think so.
Again, I haven’t seen this one, either, but it certainly sounds like it has noir sensibilities. Based on that reading, I do wish they’d have kept the novel’s ending.
I think it’s less that the man is upfront than it is the viewers playing on gender stereotypes and immediately suspecting the man, or that the audience is aware of his actions much earlier than they’d otherwise be. The other characters in the film, however, are kept in the dark until further along.