Female Smoking in Film Noir

Abstract

There are two types of women in film noir. The first is the dutiful, reliable, trustworthy woman who stands by the ill-fated male lead, such as Effie, Sam Spade's secretary in The Maltese Falcon (1941). This character may also be a foil for or contrast to the female fatale in the film such as Lily, the Swede's ex-girlfriend, is to Kitty, the femme fatale who leads Swede to destruction in The Killers (1946). The second type of woman is the femme fatale and is more common in film noir. She is gorgeous, predatory, irresponsible, and manipulative. "The dark lady, the spider woman, the evil deductress, who tempts man and brings about his destruction is among the oldest themes of art, literature, mythology, and religion in Western cultures. She is as old as Eve, and as current as today's movies, comic books and dime novels" (Place). The female lead, usually a femme fatale but not always (such as the character Laura in the movie Laura [1944] or “Slim” in To Have and Have Not [1944]) uses many devices to get what she wants. Sometimes the lead woman uses these devises as tools for her sexual power, sometimes she uses them to blend herself into the patriarchal society, competing in a man’s world. One of these devices is smoking. I viewed twenty-seven movies released between 1941 and 1950. Out of those twenty-seven movies, only twelve were found to have any significant smoking by the female lead (or shared position of lead such as Martha and Toni in The StrangeLove of Martha Ivers [1946]). I define significant smoking by a female character in an individual film as three or more examples o f the female lighting and actually smoking a cigarette, not just lighting it and setting it down. There is one exception to this, and that is the character o f Annie Laurie Star in Gun Crazy (1950). She smokes only once but the scene is important in this thesis.