By Imogen Sara Smith
Translator: Issac
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: Standard Collection
In the scene where Ava Gardner first appears in The Masked Thief (1946), she looks so deadly that no woman can beat her.
The Masked Thief (1946)
She leans on a piano, delicate and charming, the lamp next to her makes her black hair and black satin dress glow like a slick oil, and she has her back to the tormented boxer Swaid (Played by Bert Lancaster), but she knows how much she fascinates the other party.
The mesmerized Swaid makes the scene full of fun, and the skillful acting skills of Ava, who plays Katie Collins, add a little darker humor to the scene.
Gardner took a Hollywood voice class and erased his Southern accent. In a sweet girl's voice, she talks about how much she hates cruelty and can't stand to see the men she cares about being hurt. However, this is not the case at all: she likes to see men suffer, and her selfishness hurts more than the fist of a fighter. In the final scene, she completely exposes her true nature.
She snuggled up to a man who had just been shot and demanded her last breath to declare her innocent — prompting a strong and sad rebuke from a police officer played by Sam Levine: "Don't let a dying man lie."
This classic film noir depicts a cunning woman who preys on a man, so what qualities do you rely on to define this "snake and scorpion woman"? Maybe it's not just greed and cold-bloodedness, it could be fraud: they skillfully toy with men through lies and acting.
It was male anxiety that led to the emergence of snake-scorpion women – not from the wartime emancipation of women, as many people say. The reason why there is a bad red face is because men have long feared that they will be fooled by women, and they have a misogynistic belief that women are inherently deceptive and elusive.
This also shapes the way actresses play snake and scorpion women: they usually have to perform "acting", playing the appearance of them pretending to be sweet women, and at the same time being weak, so as to meet the expectations and desires of their goals.
In Dark City Dames, written by Eddie Mueller, Jane Greer recalls her role in Beyond the Whirlpool (1947), in which she plays Kathy Moffat, a charming thief, swindler and killer.
Beyond the Whirlpool (1947)
Director Jacques Turner didn't waste any time analyzing the psychology of the character, just told her directly: "The first half of the time - play a good girl." The second half of the time – playing the bad girl." He told her to act "silently" to convey her deep evil through very shallow performances.
A woman like Casey or Katie doesn't seem to have a true self other than a lie: As the repulsive Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) tells Casey, "Like leaves blown down by the wind, drifting from one ditch to another."
In order to gain the favor of men, these women will dress up as girls in distress – just like Katie, when she is caught stealing jewelry, she uses tears to make Swaydd stand up for her. She immediately transformed from a delicate woman with a smile on her face to a frightened little girl; in each scene she was another person, either seductive, or depressed, or dignified and delicate, and she would adjust her posture according to her own purpose.
In the end, Edmund O'Brien's insurance detective Rio Dan already knows her past, and when the two face each other, she begins to tell another big lie, unashamedly saying, "I hope you can believe me..." But there is also some truth between the lies.
This time, she spoke of how easily she had tricked Swaid, and when Rio Dan confronted her with a double agent trick, she shrugged casually and smiled smugly. This pleasant moment may be Katie's worst time, but also her most sincere time.
Some actresses are able to accurately and unmistakably express this two-sidedness, such as Barbara Stanwick in Double Reparations (1944). Stanwick's performance creates the greatest hypocrite in the history of cinema, and her performance, as false and distorted as the platinum hair color of her character, and as transparent and sincere as her white sweater, is still very deadly, giving us a glimpse of the dark abyss of corruption beneath its seductive brilliance.
Double Indemnity (1944)
In film noir, actresses occasionally have the opportunity to play roles other than the sweet-sounding, one-sided Kraken: they don't even have to hide their depravity. Their sincerity makes these characters hated by men free and exciting; they earn laughter by their undisguised depravity.
Anne Savage, who played the ruthless vera in The Detour (1945), was always funny and set the standard for later women, such as Hazel Brooks in Begonia Spring Sleep (1948), a sexy beauty with a dangerous atmosphere.
The Detour (1945)
Spring Sleep of Begonias (1948)
Perhaps the most shameless and unrighteous woman in film noir is Lorraine Minosa (Jane Stirling) in Billy Wilder's jaw-dropping masterpiece The Upside Down Ace (1951). While her husband was trapped in a collapsed cave, Lorraine did not want to play the role of a wife.
When the ostentatious, pessimistic journalist Chuuk Tatum (Kirk Douglas) wanted to capture her praying in church for her husband's safety, she was blunt: "I don't go to church." Kneeling will break my stockings." (Wilder said the line came from his wife, and that he would not have known about the stockings if he had spoken.) ）
The Ace of the Upside Down (1951)
Jane Sterling is a typically high-society, trained actress, she has a perfectly sarcastic, unfriendly temperament, a harsh voice, and a wooden expression, which makes her a complete kind of girl who "thinks about her interests in everything".
Even in her most vulgar times, Sterling was a pungent, arrogant look, showing that this was a woman who had hated all her life, and gradually became vicious, as unbearable as the bleach she used in her hair. When she plays Lorraine, she is not afraid to play ugly, but she also does not pretend to be vulgar and contrived: she plays this vulgar, gloomy, greedy and annoying woman, making her the most real character on the screen.
She is very interesting, and when she performs, she captures the frequent ridicule and simple vanity of the character of Lorraine, and the voice of the line is very penetrating. But her performance is not at all monotonous: her eyes sparkle with pure, childlike pleasure as she stares at the money in the cash register, and then with frightened tears and humiliation when Tatum photographs her.
Lorraine's head wasn't bright—she never understood the clever, morally struggling Tatum, nor did she understand that she couldn't show her own happiness when she made a windfall from her husband's misfortune—but in a world where everyone was lying to herself or to others, her unconcealed traits felt fresh.
That's why Tatum hates her so much. She reflects Tatum's worst side, he can't face his true self other than cynicism, so he gradually feels guilty in Lorraine.
They hated each other and attracted each other, and Lorraine attracted each other, and when they got to his side they turned violent. In the gray, dim dawn after his arrival, the two men took their own measures. Notice how the relationship between the two suddenly shifts at the end of the play: Lorraine talks indifferently about his own greed, shows rash solipsism, and then triumphantly says that he has seen through him and knows that the other person's heart is as dry and rough as his own.
Poor Leo Minosa, though buried in a cave, was a warmer, softer place than his marriage to Lorraine.
In film noir, marriage and family life often undergo drastic shifts. Wives are often in an inconspicuous position, keeping their husbands incredibly warm, listening sympathetically to his troubles, and sleeping in another bed—rarely worrying about things outside of monotonous home life.
But with one exception, which is also one of the most real and moving marriages in film noir, is Michael Curtis's Lone Sail (1949). This film is adapted from Hemingway's "Rich and Poor", which cares about reality and is extremely sharp.
Lone Sail (1949)
Harry Morgan, played by John Garfield, is no longer as charismatic and solitary as Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawkes's version; he is a tenacious, frustrated, working-class figure struggling to support his family and maintain his faltering independence and self-esteem.
He is entangled between two women: Lucy (Playa Phyllis Desta), her loyal chaff wife, and Riona (Padresha Nell), a girl who delights him and seduces him.
But these two women have far outstripped the bifurcation of the good girl or the scorpion woman— a metaphor that film noir has worn out and is beginning to question — and thus avoids becoming a cliché.
Phyllis Desda was the typical image of a housewife in postwar Hollywood, not so pretty, but healthy and fresh, but at this time, she got into that frame and clung to the lines—Lucy was fully supportive of her husband, of good character, always busy in the kitchen—without any flaws. Her performance is as plain and clear as water, as natural and real as the pressure of poverty and the quarrels at home, because it is about how a woman still maintains a sense of excitement about her husband physically.
Lucy is assertive, but when she is afraid that her husband will fall in love with the sexy Leona, she is so insecure that she has to dye her hair white and blonde. She did a new haircut, returned home, but was greeted by her daughter's opposition and her husband's incomprehension, and this scene was so heart-wrenching.
With her soft voice and her bright smile that seemed to know everything, Padrecia brought the more common black atmosphere and emotion to the ordinary life; she represented a kind of escape. But when Harry finally succumbed to her obsession, the long-awaited meeting between the two became very awkward.
Her reaction revealed her bitterness and regret ("I don't want to feel unexcited, but I don't feel anything else either.") She becomes a "third person" and finds herself unable to get her true feelings. She was proud of her infinite charm, just as Harry was proud of her strength, and in this unexpected moment, they all ushered in the limits of their abilities.
Sincerity is a trait that Lucy and Riona share; in the scene where the two meet and argue fiercely, they find that the other also has something to admire. They all saw better than Harry, who had curled up in a comfortable corner.
Women in the postwar era faced daunting choices and suffocating constraints; film noir showed us pacing in their own prisons, plotting how to maximize their meager influence.
However, no matter how deadly the characters in film noir, they are frustrated by their wrong decisions and indifferent fate. What really divides the difference between good women and bad women — or tough guys and not-so-strong men — may not be the difference between good women and bad women, but some people know it and others don't.