Portrayal of women in film noir

A common stereotype in film noir is the femme fatale, a female character designed to be alluring, but ultimately dangerous. The direct translation from French for the term femme fatale is "fatal woman". this stereotype is embedded in classic film noirs, such as Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946), Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). These examples of deadly women commit crimes inside and outside the narrative of the films. As a consistent narrative trait in film noir, there are flashbacks embedded in the storyline, so as to signal towards the presence of a larger story outside of the feature film, an association with reality.

However, this character archetype does not come without an often convoluted narrative - An example of a treacherous woman with a convoluted narrative is Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946, she "exhibits a remarkable series of unmotivated character switches and roles." In her introductory shot she is depicted as a sexual object through the narrator's eyes, however she is then depicted as a hard working woman, then a "loving playmate in an adulterous relationship; a fearful girl in need of protection, a victim of male power, a hard, ruthless murderess, a mother-to-be, then following that she is shown as a sacrifice to the judicial system. This inconsistency can be seen as a parallel to how unsure the hero is about his trajectory, although in the male hero's journey, he at least "maintains a consistency of values" in which Cora is shown to not. This problematic narrative features stereotypes about white women of the time, yet it inserts feminist ideologies through this character in her feats of violence and revenge.

Patriarchy is very common in film noir. In fact, some feminists state that the roles that women play in film noir are sometimes considered as stylistic innovations of the heteronormative patriarchy. The patriarchal order of film noir can escalate to a point that in some films, such as Double Indemnity (1944), the child becomes oppressed.

Women in film noir are often faced with the common theme of an embedded Oedipus complex in the narrative. An Oedipus complex is a threat of castration done by the female antagonist to the male protagonist of the film. In films which exhibit the challenge against the patriarchy and an internal struggle with the Oedipus complex (an example being Mildred Pierce (1945)), The film noir narrative is set up to combat a melodramatic aesthetic - the "women’s perspective" of film, as opposed to the typical gaze that is fixated on male desire. Since Mildred Pierce denies the convention of the male narrative and alters the reception of her desired point of view of the story, the home is left to unravel and reveal its state of disarray as a consequence of her absence. While there is an attempt to balance the role of the loving and sensitive mother while acting as the sole income for the home, there is an obvious resentment that her eldest daughter Veda has for Mildred. On the surface, it is understood that the disgust towards her mother is because of the source of her income, however it is later revealed that her resentment for the protagonist is because of the lack of a phallus.