Female Subjectivity, Sexuality, and the Femme Fatale in Born to Kill

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Notes

1. Borde and Chaumeton, “Towards a Definition of Film Noir,” in Film Noir Reader, p. 22.

2. See, for example, Doane, Femmes Fatales, Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (pp. 2–3); Copjec, Shades of Noir: A Reader (pp. x–xi); and Bronfen, “Femme Fatale—Negotiations of Tragic Desire,” in New Literary History (p. 106).

3. Wagner, Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir, p. 20.

4. Abbott, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, pp. 2–3.

5. Hirsch, The Dark Side of Screen: Film Noir, p, 4.

6. Place and Peterson, “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir,” in Film Noir Reader, p. 66.

7. Grossman, “Film Noir's ‘Femme Fatales’ Hard Boiled Women: Moving Beyond Gender Fantasies,” in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, p. 19–29.

8. See Place's discussion about the “redeemer”, who exists as an opposite female archetype to the femme fatale as an example of this point (Place, “Women in Film Noir,” in Women in Film Noir, pp. 60–3). Place appropriately cites Ann Miller (Virginia Huston) in Out of the Past (p. 61) as an ideal example of a redeemer who is situated in complete contrast to the dangerous Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer).

9. Grossman, Film Noir's Femme Fatales, p. 19–29.

10. See also Grossman's Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready For Her Close-Up.

11. Ibid., p. 19.

12. Naremore, More Than the Night: Film Noir in its Contexts, p. 149.

13. Bronfen, Femme Fatale—Negotiations, p. 106.

14. Ibid.

15. Born to Kill was also released as Deadlier Than the Male in Australia.

16. Borde and Chaumeton, Towards a Definition, p. 22; Cowie, “Film Noir and Women,” in Shades of Noir: A Reader, p. 125.

17. It is also worth commenting that in the film's opening scene, audience identification with Pat is invited through camera positioning that directly adopts her visual point-of-view as she approaches the prison gates to visit Joe.

18. Doane, “The Woman's Film: Possession and Address,” in Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film, p. 123.

19. Soare, “Return of the Female Gothic: The Career-Woman-In-Peril Thriller,” in Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Post-War Cinema, p. 89; Tay, “Constructing a Feminist Cinematic Genealogy: The Gothic Woman's Film beyond Psychoanalysis,” in Women: A Cultural Review, p. 264.

20. Waldman, “At Last I Can Tell It to Someone!: Feminine Point-of-View and Subjectivity in the Gothic Romance Film of the 1940s,” in Cinema Journal, pp. 4–5.

21. Pavalko and Elder, “World War II and Divorce: A Life-Course Perspective,” in American Journal of Sociology, p. 1215.

22. Modleski, Loving With a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women, p. 12.

23. Weston, Robert. Born to Kill [Review], p. 1.