YES, SYDNEY CARTON PARALLELS. I'M SO GLAD TO KNOW I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO GOT THAT VIBE.
I'm so glad it wasn't just me! And very glad you enjoyed the review. I still stand by all my feelings about this movie.
The cynic in me wants to say that the reason the novel might come off as more misogynistic in most reviews/summaries is because most of the reviews/summaries out there are written by men, who (obviously) aren't approaching the story from a female--or even feministic--perspective, and are also maybe shoe-horning the character into the now-ubiquitous femme fatale archetype (because if you aren't an abject Good Girl in noir, you must be a femme fatale, amirite?--there's no in-between).
Your cynic seems to be making a quite cogent point to me, since the femme fatale filter was one of the first things I realized I flamingly disagreed with about the popular reception of film noir. (I still bristle at otherwise sound criticism if it unproblematically accepts the primacy of the archetype. Noir is the post-Code genre where I can reliably find complicated women and vulnerable men. I have seen the femme fatale in the wild, but far less often than I have seen just about any other kind of female character—or even male characters who fill the same dangerously attractive niche.) I will reconsider my avoidance of the novel and resign myself to the absence of the film's ghost marriage which I love so much. That scene you quote is indeed badass.
While you could definitely make the case that Alberta is a femme fatale, I actually think she's more of a deconstruction of the archetype, if that makes sense.
It does, and I am interested in those. I've seen at least one full-on deconstruction in Wicked Woman (1953), one sympathetic variation in Pitfall (1948), and one so far unparalleled stone antiheroine in Too Late for Tears (1949). Feel free to ignore as many of these links as you like, obviously. I am just enjoying so much having someone to compare notes with.
(Also worth noting is how she just as much embodies the traditionally male detective archetype, even more so than Catherine in the film adaptation.)
I am guessing from the general drift of this conversation that you have seen Phantom Lady (1944), but if not, it's totally worth it for its amateur detective played by Ella Raines, even if the plot melts down completely in the third act, as I later discovered its source novel, damn it, does not do. Woman on the Run (1950) also falls into this category, although it glitches more than I would like on the follow-through.
I'm kind of a Woolrich fan, so you'll have to excuse my defensiveness, haha.
No excuses necessary! I've read less of his original work than I've seen adapted, but I recommend all the adaptations I've seen—Fear in the Night (1947), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Chase (1946) are the ones most germane to this discussion—and I agree that he fits perfectly into the gender flexibility that thrives in noir.
At the very least, he was one of the few (perhaps the only?) male crime author at the time who wrote legit female protagonists, Alberta included, which counts for something, I feel.
David Goodis pulled it off at least once with the co-protagonist of The Wounded and the Slain (1955), but I agree that otherwise I read a lot of Dorothy Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Charlotte Armstrong etc.
(I also have a few more noir reviews over there, in case you happen to be interested. I'm by no means a prolific reviewer, but sometimes the mood strikes, heh.)
no subject
I'm so glad it wasn't just me! And very glad you enjoyed the review. I still stand by all my feelings about this movie.
The cynic in me wants to say that the reason the novel might come off as more misogynistic in most reviews/summaries is because most of the reviews/summaries out there are written by men, who (obviously) aren't approaching the story from a female--or even feministic--perspective, and are also maybe shoe-horning the character into the now-ubiquitous femme fatale archetype (because if you aren't an abject Good Girl in noir, you must be a femme fatale, amirite?--there's no in-between).
Your cynic seems to be making a quite cogent point to me, since the femme fatale filter was one of the first things I realized I flamingly disagreed with about the popular reception of film noir. (I still bristle at otherwise sound criticism if it unproblematically accepts the primacy of the archetype. Noir is the post-Code genre where I can reliably find complicated women and vulnerable men. I have seen the femme fatale in the wild, but far less often than I have seen just about any other kind of female character—or even male characters who fill the same dangerously attractive niche.) I will reconsider my avoidance of the novel and resign myself to the absence of the film's ghost marriage which I love so much. That scene you quote is indeed badass.
While you could definitely make the case that Alberta is a femme fatale, I actually think she's more of a deconstruction of the archetype, if that makes sense.
It does, and I am interested in those. I've seen at least one full-on deconstruction in Wicked Woman (1953), one sympathetic variation in Pitfall (1948), and one so far unparalleled stone antiheroine in Too Late for Tears (1949). Feel free to ignore as many of these links as you like, obviously. I am just enjoying so much having someone to compare notes with.
(Also worth noting is how she just as much embodies the traditionally male detective archetype, even more so than Catherine in the film adaptation.)
I am guessing from the general drift of this conversation that you have seen Phantom Lady (1944), but if not, it's totally worth it for its amateur detective played by Ella Raines, even if the plot melts down completely in the third act, as I later discovered its source novel, damn it, does not do. Woman on the Run (1950) also falls into this category, although it glitches more than I would like on the follow-through.
I'm kind of a Woolrich fan, so you'll have to excuse my defensiveness, haha.
No excuses necessary! I've read less of his original work than I've seen adapted, but I recommend all the adaptations I've seen—Fear in the Night (1947), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Chase (1946) are the ones most germane to this discussion—and I agree that he fits perfectly into the gender flexibility that thrives in noir.
At the very least, he was one of the few (perhaps the only?) male crime author at the time who wrote legit female protagonists, Alberta included, which counts for something, I feel.
David Goodis pulled it off at least once with the co-protagonist of The Wounded and the Slain (1955), but I agree that otherwise I read a lot of Dorothy Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Charlotte Armstrong etc.
(I also have a few more noir reviews over there, in case you happen to be interested. I'm by no means a prolific reviewer, but sometimes the mood strikes, heh.)
Absolutely. I shall check them out!
(You have seen Too Late for Tears, w00t!)