Femme Fatale and Female Form in Film Noir

Act of Violence—a Film Noir Whose Advertising Promises Something for All: Pretty Gals for the Male Gaze, and Domestic Drama for the Ladies

Introduction

Act of Violence is an American noir film released in 1949 by MGM Studios, directed by Fred Zinnemann. The film follows two main characters - Frank Enley, an American expat of WWII and a squad leader - and Joe Parkson, an expat himself and an underling of Frank; his once best friend turned enemy after an excruciating ordeal set into motion by Frank himself. The film follows an atypical noir formula, depicting both characters and both sides of the story at once, leaving the audience to deduce the story themselves through the scenes the characters go through. However, the marketing of Act of Violence tells another story. Throughout MUCH of the marketing material, the three female characters in the movie are featured PROMINENTLY - the extent of which can be seen through the film’s tagline “The Manhunt No Woman Could Stop”. This gross misrepresentation of the movie serves one purpose - to garner more eyes on the movie. Act of Violence markets itself as a movie that features both men and women prominently and equally, but is in reality a movie focused solely on the two male characters - with the women only being used as a vehicle to further the men’s needs. The purpose of this paper is to show that the film is marketed in a misleading way, suggesting plenty of “eye candy” for the male gaze and plenty of domestic drama for female audiences—when in reality it is a film that really exemplifies the noir genre. From Fritz Lang’s 1931 M to John Huston’s 1941 The Maltese Falcon to Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity to Hitchcock’s 1953 I Confess to Orson Welles’ 1958 Touch of Evil, noir films have always been about guilt and violence at the heart of the American Dream. They’ve always used style—light and shadow, mood and atmosphere, double crosses, blackmail, revenge, or murder and sharp dialogue to explore the criminal side of man and to represent the clash between morality and immorality in the human soul. They’ve always used B-movie melodrama and elevated it to A-level excitement by way of stylized shooting, tense pacing, and sucks-you-in storytelling. Act of Violence is no different: it exemplifies the film noir genre by heightening an otherwise B-movie melodrama through unabashed focus on the guilt and violence at the heart of one man who is haunted by a wartime decision that ruined a friendship and that in the end costs him his own life. Yet, to market the film, MGM chose to portray it as something other than what it was: it chose to portray it as a feast of eye candy and domestic drama. Why? Perhaps the answer is that film noir is a genre that appeals to a niche audience—one fascinated by the darker side of life, the deeper moral questions, and the idea that things are not always black and white. For most audiences all that’s wanted in a film is action, suspense, drama, laughs, eye candy, and heart tugs. But noir has always been about something higher, deeper, and darker—and sometimes it has used sex appeal (as Wilder did in Double Indemnity) to lure in audiences, and other times it has simply presented itself as is (as Lang did with M)—no apologies and no concerns for whether the male gaze or the yearning for domestic drama would go satisfied. Act of Violence is the latter kind of noir—a kind that takes B-movie melodrama and elevates it by way of visual storytelling and technique—which made it hard for MGM to market, and which is why MGM gave it the Double Indemnity treatment when promoting it.

Background

The film noir genre grew out of the hardboiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.[footnoteRef:1] These were spare, snarky works that cast an eye and a turned up nose upon American life, pulled back the curtain, exposed the underbelly, and tried to show why some kind of moral code still mattered. It was often a detective-against-the-world, supported by a moral code that made no sense to anyone else, type of story. Hammett’s Maltese Falcon was adapted for the screen twice—the second time by Huston, who helped launch the genre. John Ford helped as well, with his hardboiled cowboy Westerns starring John Wayne, the first of which was 1939’s Stagecoach. These films and stories were about men and masculinity, moral codes, and temptation; cowardice and honor; violence and confrontation. They didn’t try to hide the fact that vice existed in the world. They were made during the time of the Hays Code—but that didn’t mean they had to pretend that everything was awesome in the American Dream. Film noir excelled at forcing one to face the fact that God and the Devil were fighting in the soul of every human being at one time or another. This is evident in Act of Violence, which is why it exemplifies the genre. The entire film is about this struggle—this fight to the death. It’s a film about honor, betrayal, guilt, and redemption. [1: https://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

Marketing

In the marketing of Act of Violence it is evident, however, that MGM wanted to promote the film as a kind of romance or violent romance/melodrama rather than as a noir about men with guilt; the studio painted it as a men-with-leggy-women-and-busty-broads type of noir—as a femme fatale type of noir. But the film has no femme fatale. That didn’t stop the studio though. In fact, emphasizing the sex and gun foreplay was a typical marketing ploy of the 1940s and 1950s, a time when film noir was a trendy staple in cinemas and when marketing often used busts and guns to put butts in seats. It was done with Huston’s Maltese Falcon.[footnoteRef:2] [2: https://www.filmsite.org/malt.html Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

Note how the poster exploits both the theme of gun violence and buxom femme fatales and uses the tag line “A story as EXPLOSIVE as his BLAZING automatics” to sell the subject. In the actual film, neither guns nor busts play that large of a role—but judging from the promotional material one would think the film is nothing but shoot-outs and sex appeal. Or there’s the promotional material for Double Indemnity. One can see again how the studio wanted to sell the film using Stanwyck’s legs and looks. The only difference here is that the film Double Indemnity actually makes use of them—unlike Mary Astor’s bust in Maltese Falcon or Act of Violence. In each of those films Astor’s form is more on display in the promotional artwork than it is in the actual celluloid. Even Janet Leigh, who would become uber-famous for her semi-nude scene in Hitchcock’s 1960 noir thriller Psycho, is tagged in the promotional material for Act of Violence—but in the film she is never immodestly or even suggestively dressed. But the idea of ooh-la-la sensuality is promoted in the posters and advertising for Act of Violence as though this were that kind of noir film. In actuality, that kind of noir film would be found in the other 1948 noir classic, Lady from Shanghai.[footnoteRef:3] [3: https://www.filmsite.org/ladyf.html Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

See how Rita Hayworth’s back is exposed, her form is amplified, and the tag line reads like something only a seductress would say: “I told you…you know nothing about wickedness.” In the film such sensuality would also be found: Hayworth would be seen sunbathing, wearing provocative dresses, and acting like a femme fatale. The promotional material was accurate. The idea inherent in the promotion of the Act of Violence is that here was another cinematic contribution that would serve the public’s thirst for blood, sex, romance, risk, and danger. The promotional material promises scintillating cinema with its hint of gun fights, car chases, women in peril, and men faced with mortal dangers. The marketing of the film is full of promises of intoxicating sensations—with bright, bold colors splashed across the posters, and fonts designed to give the impression of chaos and alarm. Several films of the era all used similar marketing schemes: tall, curvaceous, buxom blondes or red heads lavishly portrayed on movie posters to attract the male gaze while a hint of danger or risk is implied by a man in a shadow or a man roused to anger. In MGM’s posters for Act of Violence, it is no different.[footnoteRef:4] [4: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041088/mediaindex/?ref_=tt_mv_close Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

The marketing campaign highlights the stars of the film and its genre as a film noir. The names of the actors and actresses are displayed prominently on the posters, but the male actors names take top billing, with the three female supporting stars receiving lower billing on the promotional material.[footnoteRef:5] The studio even tried to sell a controversial social issue, highlighted by way of the woman’s point of view on one poster, suggesting that the film has a great deal of domestic tension and will include the woman’s perspective throughout—but this is really false advertising as the bulk of the film is really from the perspective of the two male leads. [5: https://www.ebay.com/itm/262066198880?hash=item3d045cd960:g:aGUAAOSwsB9WBiQI Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

MGM called it a “drama of love that was linked to an ‘Act of Violence’” as though the film was really a romantic noir thriller that female audiences will love as much as male audiences. Indeed, at the top of this poster is an actress’s face, her mouth covered by a hand, generating an image of shock and horror meant to show that the damsel in distress motif will be used in the film.[footnoteRef:6] Most of the promotional material has to rely on these tricks because it is not advertising any use of new film technology that might otherwise attract audiences to the cinema. However, one article originally published in American Cinematographer in 1948 states that the film does use some new technological tricks to advance the medium: “reflected lighting, no makeup, natural locations, and use of a 28mm lens for all shots are some of the new production trends explored in the making of this picture.”[footnoteRef:7] But none of these tricks are unique to Act of Violence really. Still, it is clear that the marketing is attempting to attract both males and females. Women are targeted by the obvious appeal to female sympathies in one poster that reads: “One morning Frank kissed me goodbye…And everything was as it had always been. That evening, he came home with horror in his eyes…and told me things that changed my life forever!”[footnoteRef:8] This text reads like a pulp magazine, meant to titillate female readers. However, it also targets men with its title, which appeals to a masculine desire for violent action—and a man holding a gun is shown in the promotional material as well. [6: https://www.ebay.com/itm/262066198880?hash=item3d045cd960:g:aGUAAOSwsB9WBiQI Accessed 3 Mar 2022] [7: https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/americancinemato29unse_0268 Accessed 3 Mar 2022] [8: https://www.ebay.com/itm/262066198880?hash=item3d045cd960:g:aGUAAOSwsB9WBiQI Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

True Noir

The look of the ad campaign does relate to the film’s visual design, as the film is a noir, and the director Fred Zinnemann is lauded in the reviews for his handling of the genre. One review calls his direction “smart” for providing “a visual setting for terror and violence.”[footnoteRef:9] Another review calls it a “striking film, expertly directed, effectively photographed, and impressively portrayed by a cast that has gotten under the skin of the story.”[footnoteRef:10] These reviews help to emphasize the fact that the film is competently directed and delivers the look and style associated with the noir genre. Yet as far as the story goes, that is another matter. The first review emphasizes that the twist does little to inspire sympathy for the male lead who betrayed his friend. While the same review does cite the credible direction of Zinnemann it does not give a flattering take on the film as a whole. Essentially it recognizes it as a cheap, flimsy, superficial addition to the noir genre—something that looks good initially but that quickly wears thin. [9: https://www.nytimes.com/1949/01/24/archives/act-of-violence-a-metro-film-with-van-heflin-janet-leigh-new.html Accessed 3 Mar 2022] [10: https://www.proquest.com/docview/177670289/177A2BE058484E2FPQ/1?accountid=14523 Accessed 3 Mar 2022]

The story is what the reviews tend to focus on: they all view Zinnemann’s directing style as superb and worthy of the noir genre—but the story is melodramatic. There is no real sense of anything controversial or innovative, aside from the fact that it was shot in a kind of “documentary” fashion within the noir structure.[footnoteRef:11] But beyond this there is nothing really “socially important” about the film. There is no hint of any really even in the promotional material: it is meant to be a straight-up pulp thriller, with dames displayed on posters to attract the male gaze, and melodramatic texts printed on posters to attract the female sympathies. It is presented as the equivalent of a 1940s date-night flick for teens—something that they can watch on the screen while they park at the drive-in, or something that might get their blood going in the dark of the cinema: sexy women and violence for the male gaze, and domestic drama for the ladies. There are no people of color in the posters, none in the trailer, and none in the film itself. It does nothing to represent diversity or equity or inclusivity. The trailer makes it seem that women figure predominantly in the lives of the two male leads—“Three WOMEN cross their evil path”—but this is really a marketing ploy to attract women to the film as much as it is to lure men. The trailer tries to lure both sexes: the first characters shown are men, then women; then men again, while a male main character narrates. The trailer makes it seem like at least one women is going to play a pivotal part in the action—but this is really an effect of editing, for no actress really plays a pivotal part at all. [11: https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/americancinemato29unse_0268 Accessed 3 Mar 2022]