Thanks to a brief exchange with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer about Ida Lupino, I am now imagining a film series of women in noir—not just noirs with female protagonists like the ones I've been collecting for the last several years,1 but noirs written, directed, or produced by women, none of these categories being mutually exclusive. (In fact, they not infrequently cross-link.) Dorothy Arzner's successor as the only female director in classical Hollywood, Lupino legendarily co-wrote and directed The Hitch-Hiker (1953), one of the best-regarded noirs I have not yet seen, as well as several other films that look at least noir-adjacent. Virginia Van Upp co-wrote and produced Gilda (1946), enough said. Once she stopped writing screenplays for Hitchcock and went into business as a producer at Universal and RKO, Joan Harrison's filmography was almost entirely noir: Phantom Lady (1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Nocturne (1946), They Won't Believe Me (1947), Ride the Pink Horse (1947). Virginia Kellogg wrote the stories for T-Men (1947) and White Heat (1949) and both story and screenplay for the definitive women-in-prison Caged (1950). Vera Caspary scripted Bedelia (1946) from her own novel of the same name. Silvia Richards wrote the screenplay for Secret Beyond the Door (1948) and the story for Rancho Notorious (1952). If I start looking more purely at source material, novels, short stories, plays, I expect the numbers to keep climbing—Caspary and Laura (1944) and The Blue Gardenia (1953), Dorothy B. Hughes and In a Lonely Place (1950), Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and The Reckless Moment (1949), Charlotte Armstrong and The Unsuspected (1947) and Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Patricia Highsmith and Strangers on a Train (1951)—and that's just off the top of my head. I didn't like Sudden Fear (1952), but it was based on a novel by Edna Sherry and the screenwriter was Lenore Coffee. I poke around on the internet for forty-five seconds and I find something called No Man of Her Own (1950) starring Barbara Stanwyck and scripted by Sally Benson and Catherine Turney. I remain confused that none of Margaret Millar's excellent novels, which ranged from the domestic to the hardboiled and were sometimes both at once, were ever adapted for film. Anyway, my point is that you could run a nice little mini-festival in this line and hardly ever have to fall back on the femme fatale.2 To be honest, I suspect someone has already done it; I just didn't think of it till now. If I were actually programming this thing, I would probably wind it up with the Wachowskis' Bound (1996) despite it being neo-noir, because it's a written-directed-starring female triple threat. Man, I wish I knew a film foundation.
1. In the order in which I discovered them: The Reckless Moment (1949), Caught (1949), Phantom Lady (1944), Black Angel (1946), Too Late for Tears (1949), The Prowler (1951), Woman on the Run (1950), and The Blue Gardenia (1953). They Live by Night (1949) and This Gun for Hire (1942) are arguable on grounds of co-protagonist. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is deliberately genre-slipping, but close enough to a noir that if I were really programming a series I'd include it. Ditto the definitely noir The Big Combo (1955) for its handling of female sexuality. I don't think it clears the definition, but Ann Savage is so good in Detour (1945) that I have trouble caring that Tom Neal is technically the protagonist. I know there exist more female-focused noirs of the canonical type, however, and I look forward to finding them.
2. The standard disclaimer: I believe the archetype of the femme fatale exists. I have even seen movies where it is a useful way of talking about the primary female character. I have not found it to be anywhere near as prevalent as noir criticism or popular reception appears to believe and I suspect it of being a trope that was reified by neo-noir in something of a Kirk Drift fashion. Similarly, it actively annoys me to see noir singled out as an unusually misogynist genre—usually with reference to the perceived ubiquitous duality of the femme fatale and the good girl—when noir has given female characters some of the most interesting dilemmas and agency I've seen in films of the '40's and '50's. I don't deny that Hollywood was and to far too great a degree remains not just a male-dominated, but a male-controlled environment; I don't deny that women who acted, wrote, produced, directed in the genre had to work within the space they were given or work even harder to make space for themselves. But have you seen some of the things that passed for romantic comedies in the days of the Production Code? Have you seen some of the things that pass for romantic comedies now? When noir did badly by women, it was not alone, and when it didn't, it's one of the reasons this genre so fascinates me.
osprey_archer about Ida Lupino, I am now imagining a film series of women in noir—not just noirs with female protagonists like the ones I've been collecting for the last several years,1 but noirs written, directed, or produced by women, none of these categories being mutually exclusive. (In fact, they not infrequently cross-link.) Dorothy Arzner's successor as the only female director in classical Hollywood, Lupino legendarily co-wrote and directed The Hitch-Hiker (1953), one of the best-regarded noirs I have not yet seen, as well as several other films that look at least noir-adjacent. Virginia Van Upp co-wrote and produced Gilda (1946), enough said. Once she stopped writing screenplays for Hitchcock and went into business as a producer at Universal and RKO, Joan Harrison's filmography was almost entirely noir: Phantom Lady (1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Nocturne (1946), They Won't Believe Me (1947), Ride the Pink Horse (1947). Virginia Kellogg wrote the stories for T-Men (1947) and White Heat (1949) and both story and screenplay for the definitive women-in-prison Caged (1950). Vera Caspary scripted Bedelia (1946) from her own novel of the same name. Silvia Richards wrote the screenplay for Secret Beyond the Door (1948) and the story for Rancho Notorious (1952). If I start looking more purely at source material, novels, short stories, plays, I expect the numbers to keep climbing—Caspary and Laura (1944) and The Blue Gardenia (1953), Dorothy B. Hughes and In a Lonely Place (1950), Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and The Reckless Moment (1949), Charlotte Armstrong and The Unsuspected (1947) and Don't Bother to Knock (1952), Patricia Highsmith and Strangers on a Train (1951)—and that's just off the top of my head. I didn't like Sudden Fear (1952), but it was based on a novel by Edna Sherry and the screenwriter was Lenore Coffee. I poke around on the internet for forty-five seconds and I find something called No Man of Her Own (1950) starring Barbara Stanwyck and scripted by Sally Benson and Catherine Turney. I remain confused that none of Margaret Millar's excellent novels, which ranged from the domestic to the hardboiled and were sometimes both at once, were ever adapted for film. Anyway, my point is that you could run a nice little mini-festival in this line and hardly ever have to fall back on the femme fatale.2 To be honest, I suspect someone has already done it; I just didn't think of it till now. If I were actually programming this thing, I would probably wind it up with the Wachowskis' Bound (1996) despite it being neo-noir, because it's a written-directed-starring female triple threat. Man, I wish I knew a film foundation.1. In the order in which I discovered them: The Reckless Moment (1949), Caught (1949), Phantom Lady (1944), Black Angel (1946), Too Late for Tears (1949), The Prowler (1951), Woman on the Run (1950), and The Blue Gardenia (1953). They Live by Night (1949) and This Gun for Hire (1942) are arguable on grounds of co-protagonist. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is deliberately genre-slipping, but close enough to a noir that if I were really programming a series I'd include it. Ditto the definitely noir The Big Combo (1955) for its handling of female sexuality. I don't think it clears the definition, but Ann Savage is so good in Detour (1945) that I have trouble caring that Tom Neal is technically the protagonist. I know there exist more female-focused noirs of the canonical type, however, and I look forward to finding them.
2. The standard disclaimer: I believe the archetype of the femme fatale exists. I have even seen movies where it is a useful way of talking about the primary female character. I have not found it to be anywhere near as prevalent as noir criticism or popular reception appears to believe and I suspect it of being a trope that was reified by neo-noir in something of a Kirk Drift fashion. Similarly, it actively annoys me to see noir singled out as an unusually misogynist genre—usually with reference to the perceived ubiquitous duality of the femme fatale and the good girl—when noir has given female characters some of the most interesting dilemmas and agency I've seen in films of the '40's and '50's. I don't deny that Hollywood was and to far too great a degree remains not just a male-dominated, but a male-controlled environment; I don't deny that women who acted, wrote, produced, directed in the genre had to work within the space they were given or work even harder to make space for themselves. But have you seen some of the things that passed for romantic comedies in the days of the Production Code? Have you seen some of the things that pass for romantic comedies now? When noir did badly by women, it was not alone, and when it didn't, it's one of the reasons this genre so fascinates me.
