Sparring or Parring Partner? A Transatlantic Head-to-Head Between Female Leads in 1940s Noir/Suspense Cinema

The detective story was through the early twentieth century, had carefully constructed conventions which sometimes sacrificed characterisation for puzzle-solving and supporting characters becoming mere plot devices, towards an unambiguous resolution in which the mystery is solved, and all loose ends are tied up. One of the victims of this style of writing was the role of women; the "omnicompetence of the exceptional—male—individual somehow makes up for the incompetent state apparatuses" [1], and also render female characters who have neither capability nor reason to keep up with the male protagonist irrevelant in the grand scheme of things. Their ultimate fate will either be a swift, untimely death, being rescued by the brooding hero, or even simply disappearing from the plot, loose ends be damned.

I have to say that a great deal of 1940s cinema does feel like it follows this vein of feminine inequity within the machinations of a plot centered more on suspense and atmosphere, than properly crafted characters. Particularly, as I mentioned before, in the genre of film most linked to the contemporary resurgence of the detective story, noir/suspense cinema. For every Barbara Stanwyck in 'Double Indemnity' there were tons of stock, sultry but ultimately unsubstantial female characters prancing around onscreen. It's not like the talent pool was dwindling, it was the writing in many respects bar a few, getting rather lazy. Heck, the great Bette Davis, I believe, chose around the 1940s to start hamming it up a great deal in many performances, which I do think can be attested somewhat to the increasingly sparse numbers of good female leading roles. See her role in say, 'Watch on the Rhine' and her thanklessly sidelined character and you can kind of see why she gave such a histrionic OTT portrayal in 'Mr Skeffington' shortly afterwards, as if to compensate. 

But I digress. Back to the role of the female character in 1940s Noir/Suspense Cinema. Before getting into that I'd like to clear up some of the presumptions that the likes of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett in any way contributed to this pigeonholing of females into femme fatales. Chandler’s inadvertent reputation as a misogynistic writer owes its being partly to the silver screen adaptations of his Philip Marlowe novels. Whereas his novels stressed the importance of deconstructing the stereotypical role of women in detective stories as being either red herrings or love interests, the censors of 1940s Hollywood, for various reasons, failed to translate this to the silver screen. Case in point—the character of Ann Riordan in Farewell My Lovely is a headstrong, self-assured young lady. In a world where “verbal equality translates to social equality” [2], Riordan’s ability to spar verbally with Marlowe makes her a very worthy sidekick to Marlowe; her feminine independence even goes so far as to directly attack the pillars of masculinity by declaring that “sometimes I hate men. Old men, young men, football players, opera tenors, smart millionaires, beautiful men who are gigolos and almost-heels who are—private detectives”. She is attracted to Marlowe but is by no means a passive damsel in distress. In Murder, My Sweet (the 1944 Edward Dmytyk adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely) she is marginalized into a stock love interest who is transformed into a loyal stepdaughter of Lewin Lockridge Grayle.

Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart, cast Bogart’s paramour Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge; the opening silhouettes of Bogart and Bacall that precede the opening credits make it clear that this superstar coupling is the main highlight, generating sexual tension to ramp up the box office sales. Admirable marketing strategy indeed, and the final product is nevertheless a highly interesting film in its own right, but in doing so the more visceral impact “spoiled, exacting, armed and devious” and non-love interest Vivian is diminished. Let me re-iterate; there's nothing wrong at all with Bacall's performance. She does a great deal with the little she has, the problem is that the character, the source material and indeed, Bogart, deserved a lot more than just the usual sultry seducer who ultimately and somewhat out of character, helps our protagonist out of his rut with kisses to spare.

Though sultry and mysterious enough, not quite a fully-formed character: Lauren Bacall in 'The Big Sleep'

One of the most telling themes that recur throughout the two novels is the honourable nature of Marlowe. Seing in a coloured glass window the image of “a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree”, he wryly notes the helplessness of the lady (her inability to rescue herself evidenced by her nakedness—“didn’t have any clothes on but some very long convenient hair”); and the knight, who foreshadows the role Marlowe will play with Carmen Sternwood, an unintelligent young lady who 'likes to pull the wings of flies' and cause trouble for herself. Later on, Marlowe has to save an unclothed Carmen who is 'just a dope' and can’t do anything to help herself, while also resisting her sexual advances. Marlowe is as 'hot-blooded' as any other man, he notes, but as a knight to General Sternwood’s figure of 'the old monarch in desperate need of a knight to keep order amongst his ranks' [3].

Masculinity, which acts as a rejection of weakness to feminine allure, is stipulated as a chivalric aspect of Marlowe; but ultimately in a world in which 'knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights', this is irrelevant; Marlowe’s aspirations of knightly valour is gradually deconstructed by a world overcome by vice. In 'freeing of men and women from the concepts of ‘knightlyness’ and ‘ladyness’, from the inadequate and invalid stereotypes assigned by gender' [4] Chandler forces Marlowe to go against his idealised code and makes him a fish out of water. This results in a more fluid differentiation of roles between the sexes; with Marlowe removed of his knighthood and General Sternwood of his kingship, the female figures Vivian and Carmen have considerably more power alongside, if not yet over, the men than was the norm for the private detective genre.

Unfortunately this is all rather undermined by the film adaptation of The Big Sleep, where most of the intersexual interplay involves either Bogart and Bacall trading thinly veiled innuendos; when it comes down to solving the case, Marlowe wryly tells Bacall to “never mind talking. Let me do it”, emphasising that it is men who do the heavy lifting of the actual plot, with women doing little more than watch and flirt from the sidelines. “Silver Wig”, in the novel, is Eddie Mars’ wife who in the novel who acts as a “platinumed” ray of light into the darkness and morbidity of the third act, helping to rescue Marlowe from his predicament at the risk of her own life and a “kind of nice girl”; in the film she appears briefly to raise histrionics and pour water on Marlowe. While “Silver-Wig” was a resourceful, brave in the novel, and saved Marlowe from the clutches of the vicious Canino, a damsel to the rescue with no obligation whatsoever to Marlowe, the film version of Vivian saves Marlowe out of romantic obligation to the dominant male figure, subordinate to him.

Kathleen Ryan in 'Odd Man Out'

This is where the Transatlantic Head-to-Head as I see it starts to come into play. Though British cinema has not been without its fair share of thankless female roles and performances, there is a distinct sense from much of what I've seen of the time that the Brits did have a couple of instances where they used often limited or stereotyped feminine tropes and turned them into the greater sum of their parts. One prominent example is in Carol Reed's terrific 1947 thriller 'Odd Man Out'. There's James Mason's terrific leading turn as an IRA leader on the run from the authorities and some splendid supporting turns by a particularly unhinged Robert Newton, a heartfelt W.G. Fay and especially the wonderfully eccentric and endearing F.J. McCormick. Yet it is Kathleen Ryan in the at first, seemingly simple role of love interest to Mason's character, who is the beating heart of the film, and not in the usual way. Her Kathleen Sullivan is 'beautiful and sturdy, presents a resolute face to the dark destiny' [5] that awaits her and Mason's Johnny; in a bleak and unrelenting film she manages to both adhere to this general sense of inevitable doom, and yet add a spark of relentless drive to keep Johnny alive and away from the authorities. It's spellbindingly understated work and testament really to Reed's excellent direction that out of all the follies and selfishness rampant around the town, it's McCormick's opportunistic swindler and Ryan's lovelorn lady who ultimately represent the most selfless aspects of humanity. Strong female roles like these acquainted themselves wonderfully with leading ladies Deborah Kerr, Margaret Lockwood, and sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, and character actresses like Hermione Baddeley, and when the likes of Kerr transplanted to the States in the 1950s, helped to usher in a series of non-subordinate, fully characterised female characters.

From her breakout in the early 40's onwards, Kerr's talents and incredible screen presence rarely
let her down, playing both light comic and dramatic roles with equal aplomb.

Olivia de Havilland continued putting out strong work throughout the
1940's, the pinnacle being 1949's 'The Heiress'.

An additional example that's equally interesting would be Hitchcock's transplantation to America in the mid-1940s. With 'Shadow of a Doubt' he did the unthinkable: a British director not only succesfully capturing the aura of 1940s suburbia, but at the same time refusing to allow the (in many cases) less interesting 'innocent' figure of the daughter figure to go to waste, as it so often did. Teresa Wright's performance in 'Shadow of a Doubt' is so spellbinding because it takes a well-worn character of the and deconstructs it down to terrifying, viscreal effect. Marvellous work. 

And soon America began taking note, too, from its own auteurs like Billy Wilder and John Huston, who coaxed out from the likes of Barbara Stanwyck and Mary Astor wonderfully complex depictions of the femme fatale. See? I have nothing against--in fact I love--the trope of the femme fatale so long as it creates a properly independent character in its own right, and not merely an intermediary between clues, or a simple red herring of a love interest. And in 1944's 'Laura' this deconstruction of the shallow nature of of some of the 1940s Female Leads in noir/suspense genres was put to another level by having the whole plot centre around various men's obsessions over the titular Laura (played well by Gene Tierney) and , before revealing her for what she is: human. A fact which many filmmakers unfortunately neglected in the grand scheme of having females as narrative fodder, but which some fortunately acknowledged, and in turn crafting our not mere proverbial parring partners, but sparring, autonomous and independent characters in their own right.

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[1] Johanna M. Smith, “Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction: Gendering the Canon”. Penn State University Press, Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 26, No. ½ (Jul., 1991), p. 79

[2] John Paul Athanasourelis, “Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond Chandler”, University of North Texas, Studies in the Novel, Vol. 35, No. 3, THE LEGACY OF RAYMOND CHANDLER: NEITHER TARNISHED NOR AFRAID (fall 2003), p. 329

[3] Balazs Biro, Raymond Chandler: Breaking the Norms of the Detective Genre, http://www.ia.hiof.no/~borres/krim/pdffiler/Biro.pdf

[4] Sharon Devaney-Lovinguth: Modernism and Gender in the Novels of Raymond Chandler, p. 8

[5] Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fns99n8.html

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