Introduction: Beyond the Limits of Noir Scholarship

Abstract

The femme fatale of film noir has attracted considerable scholarly attention over the decades since 1955, when Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton defined the figure as a ‘new type of woman’ (1996, p. 22), one who is as fatal for herself as she is to those who become entangled in her schemes. To date, interest in the fatale figure has, for the most part, centred on two cinematic cycles. Firstly, the classic film noir era of the 1940s and 1950s. Feminists, film scholars, and psychoanalytic theorists are well known for their innovative critiques of the dark lady of this period, exploring her elemental characteristics and establishing the figure as representative of deep-seated patriarchal anxieties stemming from cultural shifts in gender dynamics taking place in society at the time (see Mary Ann Doane, 1991; Janey Place, 1998; and E. Ann Kaplan, 1998 for example).