Not every Femme Fatale is a Femme Fatale
The Femme Fatale is a character who turns up rather a lot in the noir era. Ava Gardner tempted Burt Lancaster to his doom in The Killers . Barbara Stanwick persuaded Fred MacMurray to commit a murder in Double Indemnity . Jane Greer dominated Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past . Claire Trevor dominated, well, everybody ... in multiple films. And just wait till we get a chance to see Lizabeth Scott in action (spoilers!). Men Act; Women Appear (unless they're evil). John Berger famously said that "Men look at women; women look at themselves being looked at." Men look at women. Women look at puppies. Laura Mulvey took Berger's ideas and developed them into an entire branch of film analysis (which she dubbed The Male Gaze ) based on the idea that men in cinema are the subjects , while women are the objects . "Men look at women. Women look at themselves being looked at..." There are certainly plenty of examples of women being objectified in popul...