THE GREAT THREAT

The mystique of the glamorous and sexuallyliberated femme fatale continues to fascinate, and haunt, cinema even today. In a special for Bazaar India, Ranjani Mazumdar explores the allure and fall of the dazzling figure.

- Ranjani Mazumdar

“Her resistance to conventional notions of romance and domesticity has given her an enduring power.”

In Billy Wilder’s classic noir, Double Indemnity (1944), a woman in a bad marriage (Barbara Stanwyck) has an affair with an insurance agent (Fred MacMurray) whose help she needs to murder her husband. In order to acquire her independence, she decides to have an affair, but only as part of a cold-blooded conspiracy to access money from her husband’s insurance. Here is a woman who plots her escape through an elaborate game of seduction and betrayal. With Double Indemnity, the fashionably adorned Stanwyck emerged as one of the most iconic femme fatales of the black-and-white era.

The femme fatale’s alluring and threatening sexuality can be traced back to the early 20th century. The availability of new technologies of photography and cinema helped give visual form to this psychologically-ambiguous and powerful figure. Over time, she travelled across specific cultural and historical contexts to evoke complicated notions of female power, iconography, and sexual aberration. Her resistance to conventional notions of romance and domesticity has given her an enduring power and fan following across the world.