Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

“Film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art. Thus woman here as elsewhere is defined by her sexuality: the dark lady has access to it and the virgin does not. […] [W]omen are defined in relation to men, and the centrality of sexuality in this definition is a key to understanding the position of women in our culture. The primary crime the liberated woman is guilty of is refusing to be defined in such a way, and this refusal can be perversely seen (in art, or in life) as an attack on men’s very existence.”

“The source and the operation of the sexual woman’s power and its danger to the male character is expressed visually both in the iconography of the image and in the visual style. The iconography is explicitly sexual, and often explicitly violent as well: long hair (blond or dark), makeup, and jewellery. Cigarettes with their wispy trails of smoke can become cues of dark and immoral sensuality.”

— Janey Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 1978 (in E. Ann Kaplan, Women in Film Noir)

(Image via Laterna Magica)