Projecting Trauma: The Femme Fatale in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir

Barbara Hales
Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, Volume 23, 2007, pp. 224-243 (Article)
Published by University of Nebraska Press DOI: 10.1353/wgy.2008.0002

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wgy/summary/v023/23.1hales.html

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Projecting Trauma: The Femme Fatale in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir
Barbara Hales

This article challenges recent scholarship on German exile directors by suggesting that the context of Weimar culture is relevant to understanding the work of these directors in Hollywood. I propose that film noir of the 1940s and 1950s conveys the crisis of male identity resulting from World War I by way of the femme fatale character. The paper begins with an examination of the traumatic conditions of post-war Weimar that constructed the woman as criminal and double and then proceeds to an analysis of filmic depictions of the femme fatale in Hollywood and Weimar. (BH) Where, one wonders, does this energy come from which continues to emanate from that conceptual black hole which is film noir? Thomas Elsaesser (132)1 A number of critics in recent scholarship have cautioned against overemphasizing the influence of Weimar culture on Hollywood films directed by German exiles.2 For example, Janice Morgan finds the dark urban aesthetic of 1930s Paris, where many exile directors lived, to be an equally significant influence on noir cinema as Weimar culture. Gerd Gemnden and Anton Kaes argue that one must consider both Old as well as New World influences, particularly those relating to US politics, filmic tradition, and Hollywood culture (5). Thomas Elsaesser goes even further in stating that the conditions surrounding Hollywood production in the 1940s obstructed the directors ability to impose his own vision or psycho-social formation upon his films. Against Elsaesser and others caution, I argue that German filmmakers in exile are deeply indebted to the Old World, specifically to their

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Weimar past.3 I propose that film noir of the 1940s and 1950s directed by German migrs features the crisis of male identity that can only be understood in light of Weimar trauma. I further contend that exiled directors managed this crisis via psychic transference that projected their anxieties onto the character of the femme fatale. The femme fatale character present in noir cinema has important antecedents in Weimar culture. Although depictions of the femme fatale as sexual criminal and double can be found in other cultures and time periods, the pervasiveness of these character types in Weimar culture underscores this context as significant in the femme fatales re-emergence in noir cinema. Empirical analysis substantiates this hypothesis regarding the origins of noir cinema. Using Silver and Wards encyclopedic work of film noir of the 1940s and 1950s, I have analyzed the plot synopses of 264 films from this period. Of these, 66% of the films directed by German migr directors feature the femme fatale character as central to the plot. In contrast, only 14% of non-migr films feature the femme fatale. With strong empirical evidence substantiating the presence of the femme fatale character, I will proceed first to analyze the traumatic conditions of postwar Weimar that constructed the woman as criminal and double and then move to filmic depictions of the femme fatale in Hollywood and Weimar.

Weimar Antecedents of Hollywood Noir One finds in both popular and scholarly literature of the Weimar period an understanding of the femme fatale as a psychic projection of male subjectivity in crisis. In an article for Uhu magazine entitled Das gespaltene Ich (The Split Self, 1930), Elisabeth Enke tracks the double nature of this self. Specifically, she looks at the ironic self that lives alongside simple uncomplicated feeling: When a person continually separates his feelings from his intellectual life, then the emotional life suffers. It is cut off, suppressed, instead of being open to life4 (54, 56). Advancing a similar view, Weimar physician Ernst Simmel explores a divided self that resulted from the traumas of World War I. Simmel notes that the First World War, claiming 2 million dead and 4 million disabled on the German side, had devastated those who took part in it and became the root of a difficult conflict in which the personality finds itself, confronted with a world changed by the war (7). Whenever a person's experience is too disturbing for the conscious mind to grasp, Simmel contends that the individual is forced to suppress it into the subconscious register (7).

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The splitting of the self into cold exterior and turbulent interior provided evidence of male subjectivity in crisis. In an effort to work through this crisis, the Weimar construction of the sexual woman served as a mirror of fears and anxieties brought on by historical developments.5 One cannot underestimate the impact of psychic turmoil during this period. This past continued to traumatize German exile directors as evidenced by the themes of memory, desire, loss, longing, and nostalgia present in their Hollywood works.6 The longing for an irrecoverable past and the subsequent crisis of masculinity resulted in the transference of the directors psychic trauma onto the femme fatale. In order to understand the exiles trauma, one must trace the origin of this damaged subjectivity and the resulting construction of the femme fatale. Many cultural productions of the Weimar period reflect the shattered subjectivity stemming from the war and its aftermath. According to Sigmund Freud, the war-torn subject seeks some form of mastery in an attempt to restore his shattered mental state. In his 1917 essay Mourning and Melancholia (Trauer und Melancholie), Freud asserts that what has been lost must be reconstructed in order to develop a healthy subjectivity. Although we typically think of mourning as the response to the loss of a loved one, Freud expands this conception by considering a similar response in the loss of ones country, liberty, and ideals (243). The cure for this loss, according to Freud, requires a testing of reality in which the subject conjures memories of the past, only to realize that the lost object no longer exists (255). Freud, in his concentration on mastery through repetition, claims that an image of trauma must re-emerge and be overcome. Freud's theories in relation to the trauma of the First World War suggest a damaged male subjectivity that actively pursues wholeness. I note that such attempts at mastery led to the construction of the femme fatale to symbolize the evils of war and the chaos of the postwar period. Cultural works of the Weimar period abound with depictions of the sexualized woman. She may be seen in works by artists such as Otto Dix, who thematized the grotesque whore in the company of disabled war victims. Dix's painting, The Trench (192023),7 won acclaim from then contemporary critics who praised its social commentary: [Dix] does not shy away from a brutality of expression (Willi Wolfradt qtd. in Mrz and Radeke 22).8 Dix also practiced a brutality of expression when rendering his interpretation of Weimar prostitutes. In paintings like Girl in Front of the Mirror (1921) and Three Prostitutes on the Street (1925), Dix creates lewd women with missing teeth and mad expressions.9 These femmes fatales, prowling the street or staring narcissistically at their own misshapen bodies, represented the ills of a war-ravaged Weimar society.

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Weimar critics saw these female images as rotten witnesses of a system of unscrupulous exploitation (Erich Knauf qtd. in Mrz and Radeke 50).10 The Weimar femme fatale who preys on unsuspecting males was also evident in depictions of the criminal woman and the double. While the popular press was obsessed with stories of crime, particularly those involving female culprits, the pseudoscience of the day attributed female criminality to her insatiable libido. In addition to the female criminal, the threatening Mannsweib (Mannish Woman) figure was vilified in the Weimar press. The alleged trend of masculinized women, synonymous with the New Woman's androgyny, was decried by many Weimar critics who saw them as a threat to the stability of family and state. Widely chastised for her male dress and assertive behavior in the workplace and in the bedroom, the New Woman was seen to be on a collision course with male sensibilities. An article in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (Berlin Illustrated Newspaper) comments on the garon style: The look of a sickeningly sweet boy is detested by every real boy or man (Weimar Republic Sourcebook 659). The BIZ article further states that it is time for male judgment to rule against these odious fashions, since the trend toward masculinization in women's fashions is so unpalatable. The threat posed by the oversexualized woman symbolizes her weakened male counterpart. The inner turmoil of exile directors resurfaces in the person of the femme fatale. Applying Freuds understanding to the postwar psychic state, mens inability to re-appropriate a unified identity results in an acknowledgement of an irrecoverable loss. Due to this inability/breakdown, men then transfer their damaged psyches onto the character of the femme fatale.

Woman as a Sexual Criminal in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir Before making cross-cultural comparisons, a clear definition of the femme fatale character is needed. Virginia Allen and Mary Ann Doane provide helpful definitions, which I will draw upon. Virginia Allen defines the term as a woman who lures men into danger, destruction, and even death by means of her overwhelmingly seductive charms (preface). Her danger exists in the moment of abandonment in the sex acta loss of self-awareness following a conscious seduction of the male (2). The femme fatale is a sexual entity with the capacity to drain men's vital powers and the diametric opposite of the good woman who passively accept[s] impregnation, motherhood, domesticity, [and] the control and domination of her sexuality by men (Allen 4). Mary Ann Doane

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theorizes the femme fatale as an articulation of fears surrounding the loss of stability and centrality of the ego [ ] appear[ing] quite explicitly in the process of her representation as castration anxiety (Femmes Fatales 2). She is a symptom of male fears about feminism, acting as an emblem for specific historical moments (Femmes Fatales 23). In G.W. Pabst's Weimar film Pandora's Box (1929), the femme fatale character Lulu conjures an image that [ ] calls forth the modern anxieties of male consciousness (Femmes Fatales 162). The Weimar media proclaimed the actress Louise Brooks, who played Lulu, to be the embodiment of dramatist Frank Wedekind's Lulu, an instinct-driven woman possessed by insatiable sexual desire (Die Bchse der Pandora). Critics saw a sexual instinct in Lulu that they considered demonic and typically female. Brookss character was based on Wedekinds manuscript entitled Die Bchse der Pandora: Eine Monstretragdie (Pandoras Box: A Monster Tragedy, 1894). Here, the quintessential femme fatale uses her sexuality to destroy the men around her (Libbon 56). The depiction of Lulu at the end of the nineteenth century marks a fear of the newly established womens emancipation movement and the liberated woman (Libbon 54). The Weimar reception of Lulu's monstrous sexuality reveals a widespread link between sexuality and criminality. Weimar criminologist Erich Wulffen posits that crime is a form of sexual release for women as a sexual impulse is redirected in the act of crime. Moreover, woman's instinctive viciousness makes her criminal acts more heinous than those of a man (Wulffen 69).11 Wulffen's mammoth project, Woman as a Sexual Criminal (Das Weib als Sexualverbrecherin), traces first the psychosexualis of woman and then analyzes various crimes attributed to female criminals. According to Wulffen, woman, due to her primordial natural function, judges everything with reference to her sexual desire. The spurned woman reacts with jealousy and vengeance that leads to criminal activity (6162).12 Wulffen uses the terms of instinct and sexuality to describe the criminal woman. When the instinctive viciousness of woman is aroused, it seems more primitive than man's, and in a religious context, she could be regarded as evil itself (69). Wulffen's frightening prescription for female criminality is forced medical sterilization to prevent degenerate progeny. This action will, in turn, eliminate an excessive libido and prevent prostitution, as well as other immoral offenses (520). Wulffen's psychological study of the criminal woman, while the most comprehensive, is not the only treatise of its kind. Criminal psychologist Hans Schneickert published an extended essay on woman as criminal that was part of a series of papers on female sexuality. Schneickert's Das Weib als Erpresserin und Anstifterin (Woman as Blackmailer and Instigator)

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begins by stating that studies on the criminal woman belong in the area of sexual research. For Schneickert, sexually colored ideas lead the psychopathic woman to crime. Moreover, woman is not only responsible for the crime that she directly commits, but also for the crimes that she motivates. Schneickert believes that even if the crime is carried out by the physically stronger man, the plot may often be attributed to a woman. In addition, many crimes may be perpetrated because of or for a woman (30). Together with the aforementioned criminological treatises, depictions of the female sexual criminal were also present in the Weimar mass media. Widely read newspapers such as the Berliner Tageblatt (Berlin Daily) and the Generalanzeiger fr Dortmund (General Advertiser for Dortmund) ran articles featuring the female criminal on a regular basis. In a 1930 article entitled Die Kriminalitt der Frau (Womans Criminality), the prototypical woman is pictured as instinctual and driven by feeling. She is more reserved by nature, but if the dam breaks, if her instincts are unleashed, she becomes a far worse criminal than her male counterpart: When [ ] woman becomes a criminal, then we experience that all the strong instincts like cruelty, revengefulness, hate, jealousy, anger, [and] fury, erupt more strongly in her than in man (Samuelsdorff 8).13 Additional articles explore the biological basis of womans criminality by focusing on the distinctive biological phases of a womans life: menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. Woman's distinctive biological changes were thought to result in psychological problems, making woman less able to reason and less able to answer for her criminal deeds (Verstimmte Frauen 1).14 Along with the work of Weimar criminologists Wulffen and Schneickert, Weimar film offers various examples of the sexual woman involved in a criminal milieu. Karl Grune's film The Street (1923) presents a conflict between the security of traditional petty bourgeois morality and the exhilarating but dangerous pull of nightlife. Amidst the debauchery of nightlife culture, the prostitute (Aud Egede Nissen), with the aid of her male accomplices, entices the male protagonist into a game of cards. In the end, the prostitute's accomplices frame the protagonist for murder, unleashing a tangled scenario from which he seemingly cannot escape. It is the femme fatale and her relationship to the criminal underworld that undermines the protagonists bourgeois values and highlights the danger and allure of the street.15 Several other Weimar films depict women as members of a crime syndicate. Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) portrays an oversexualized woman as a willing accomplice to criminal enterprises. In Langs Spies (1928), the master criminal Haghi (Rudolf Kleine-Rogge), enlists a cadre of seductive women to carry out his orders. Once again,

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these films may be understood in terms of the psychological paradigms of the day. According to Wulffen, woman possesses a less objective sense of justice, making her deficient in observing the law and police regulations (57). The sexual woman is synonymous with lawlessness in her tendency to enter the world of the anti-social (Weinberger 58). It is interesting to note, however, that a number of recent critics have recognized a similar dynamic in Hollywood film noir.16 Dana Polan argues that sexual desire in 1940s film noir remains outside the narrative, splitting off to become an independent force: Criminality and nonspiritualized sexuality turn extreme (203). J.P. Telotte conceives of film noir as a large body of American films produced from 194158 that feature the theme of violation. For Telotte, vice, corruption, [and] unrestrained desire make up the violent narrative content of film noir (Voices in the Dark 3). Finally, Mary Ann Doane connects film noir's penchant for the criminal and sexual to the problem of woman as enigma that must be solved: film noir is thus a detour, or a bending of the hermeneutic code from the questions connected with a crime to the difficulty posed by woman as enigma (or crime) (Femmes Fatales 102). The solution to the noir mystery hinges on deciphering womans inner nature. Many of the German exile directors noir films are based on mental illness that lies dormant in the femme fatale and then surfaces through sexual motives. In Curtis Bernhardt's film Possessed (1947), the femme fatales latent schizophrenia is triggered by the loss of her lover. Doane argues that filmic depictions of woman's mental illness provide, in fact, metaphors for an undesirable aspect of femininity (The Desire to Desire 63). In the case of Possessed, the femme fatale's insatiable desire exceeds normal boundaries, triggering a psychotic state (The Desire to Desire 62). Films marked by medical discourse may be considered a subgenre in which the doctor or psychiatrist is responsible for treating womans narcissism.17 This disease threatens to contaminate the male protagonist, and the masculine discourses of medicine and the law must join forces to diagnose and treat female illness before it leads to criminal actions (The Desire to Desire 5455). Medical discourse films directed by German migrs in particular are defined by this relationship between mental illness and criminality. These films all illustrate the notion that excessive female sexuality may activate dormant disease, leading to criminal activity.18 In Possessed, femme fatale Louise Howell (Joan Crawford) reveals her debilitating psychosis. Spurned by her lover, David Sutton (Van Heflin), Louise seeks the affection of her employer, Dean Graham (Raymond Massey). Under these circumstances, Louise's dormant schizophrenia manifests itself when she suspects her stepdaughter of seeing David. Louise goes so far as to

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hallucinate the murder of her stepdaughter. In the end, Louise murders David, the object of her desire, shooting him dead at point blank range. The film begins with Louise roaming the city streets repeating Davids name. Doctors intent on treating her illness realize that the cure lies in the mans name (Doane, The Desire to Desire 54). Louises flashback narrative reveals that her first psychotic break occurred when she encountered David at a symphony concert. Brought to the edge of hysteria by a clock ticking, falling rain, and the sound of her own heartbeat, Louise pushes her stepdaughter down the staircase in a jealous rage. Her disjointed narrative account becomes hysterical at the point when her personal reality is revealed to be psychotic. The spectator enters this hallucination since the flashback sequence promises truth and is then exposed to be false (Doane, The Desire to Desire 5657). This deceptive flashback, together with disarming point-of-view shots throughout the film, exposes Louises unreliable vision. This faulty vision is diagnosed by a host of doctors as a persecution complex, neurasthenia with manifestations of extreme suggestibility, and schizophrenia, all labels for her insatiable desire. A further example of latent illness triggered by sexuality is found in John Brahms film The Locket (1946). While the female protagonist in The Locket develops her mental illness in childhood, the physical manifestations appear when she becomes involved with a man. Dr. Blair (Brian Aherne) introduces Nancy's (Laraine Day) story as a tale involving a hopelessly twisted personality. Each of the men in Nancy's life loves and jealously protects her, only to see her steal over and over again. The necklace that she receives as a child provides a metaphor for her illness. The diamond locket symbolizes the femme fatale as she deceives all around her, covering her interior turmoil with a seductively decorative exterior (Turim 326). Nancy only experiences a full psychotic break at the end of the film, at which point she is held accountable for her crimes. The Locket foregrounds the combination of psychosis, female sexuality, and crime, manifesting the sexual-psychotic nature of theft. The sexual woman as thief in film noir finds its antecedent in Weimar culture. Joe May's Weimar film Asphalt (1929) depicts a female thief (Betty Amann) who is driven by an uncontrollable urge to steal. The term duplicitous best describes the diamond thief in Asphalt, who, with tears, pleading, and tricks, pursues the men she desires, inevitably escaping prosecution from the law. Wulffen notes that sexual urges are the motor for the female thief: Lust and strong desire [ ] may readily be relieved in theft. [ ] [T]he tendency to steal seems to be innate and may quickly develop into the subtle technique of the accomplished [female] thief (7576). Femme fatale Nancy, depicted as the mad prophet

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Cassandra by the men who love her, embodies Wulffen's notion of female sexuality as dark omen.19 The femme fatale as psychotic criminal is a monstrous sexual entity who lies, steals, and murders. According to Wulffen, the chronic nymphomaniac poses a threat to the social order as a result of her disregard for public morality. Wulffen quotes Krafft-Ebing on nymphomania and the femme fatale: Woe unto the man who falls into the meshes of such an insatiable Messalina, whose sexual appetite is never appeased [ ]. These unfortunate women disseminate the spirit of lewdness, demoralizing their surroundings; [ ] [they] become a danger to boys, and are liable to corrupt even infants (333).

Constructions of the Female Double The damaged psyche of the film noir femme fatale emerges as well in Robert Siodmaks thriller Dark Mirror (1946). At the beginning of the film, evil twin Terry (Olivia de Havilland) is revealed to be a sexual seductress and a murderess, but constant confusion blurs the line between Terry and her innocent twin sister Ruth (also played by Olivia de Havilland). In Dark Mirror, we learn from the psychiatrist and the policeman involved in the murder case that twins are usually penalized in some way by nature, either psychically or physically. A strong rivalry between sisters, or even between all women, can turn abnormal and result in paranoiac criminal behavior. Female twins Ruth and Terry represent anxieties unleashed by splitting female nature into good and evil. One often sees this doubling in film noir as the juxtaposition of virgin and whore. While the femme fatale figure feels at home in the world of cheap dives, shadowy doorways and mysterious settings, her good girl opposite is a redeemer, playing the part of either the innocent victim [ ] longsuffering and faithful lover [ ] or as a contrast to the fringe world itself (Place 4142). Virtuous female figures are often murdered at the beginning of the film, inspiring the male protagonist to seek revenge. Lucy Fischer discusses the doubling of the female nature as part of a broader cultural conception of woman. Woman is portrayed in a bifurcated manner due to conventional views of femininity. She embodies at once Nature and Artifice and Life and Death, depending on the contradictory expectations expressed toward her by man (184). Splitting woman into good and bad also expresses gender identification in the form of masculine versus feminine poles. In film noir such as The Dark Mirror, the femme fatale meets the criteria for a masculine persona. Terry controls life and death in her role as a murderess. She also defines identity

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in the films final mirror shots, placing Ruths identity/image into question, and finally destroying her image by shattering the mirror.20 This sexual womans resourcefulness and her resolve to carry out crime and coercion place the aggressive femme fatale in a traditionally male sphere of activity. Fritz Lang's noir western Rancho Notorious (1952) features both masculine and feminine traits in the androgynous femme fatale. Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich) enjoys a reputation throughout the Southwest: men have fought and died for her, and a railroad has been named after her. Her stunning looks and saloon-style costumes, highlighted in a series of flashbacks, place her squarely in the femme fatale category. Altars red dress, her red bedroom interior, and the films architecture of red rocks confirm this sexuality. A bar singer by profession, she runs a horse ranch for fugitives, playing object of the male gaze for Frenchy (Mel Ferrer) and the rest of the men who stay at the ranch. Altar's seductive look and her position as femme fatale are curiously accentuated by her role as boss man. In her ranch persona, she wears trousers and a vest. She enforces the rules of the house (no fighting, no questions, everybody works), while collecting ten percent of the criminal earnings from the men. As a woman equally comfortable in jeans and in an evening dress, she operates simultaneously in the man's world of the ranch and as Frenchy's female companion, complete with diamonds and perfume. In the end, Altar's masculine nature, her role as businesswoman and criminal conspirator, is replaced by her sacrifice for her lover. Rancho Notorious is a noir investigative Western, complete with hate, murder, and revenge that centers on the femme fatale.21 The femme fatale's masculine and feminine characteristics, however, complicate this scenario. Altar Keane's activity in the spheres of criminality and horse ranching strikingly contrasts with her devotion to Frenchy. Reading this androgynous character through a Weimar lens helps to locate its Old World origins. Not only did Fritz Lang direct Rancho, but Marlene Dietrich, star of the Weimar classic film The Blue Angel (1930), also played the role of Altar.22 A cult figure for lesbians in twenties Berlin, Marlene Dietrich operated as a Weimar androgynous icon. Her duet with Margo Lion, entitled My Best Girlfriend, documents bisexual desire in Weimar culture: Before there was the houseboy / but that was yesterday / and instead of houseboys / I have a housegirl today (Qtd. in Ltgens 98).23 Here the Dietrich persona oscillates between heterosexual and homosexual desire. The doubled figure of Altar Keane/Marlene Dietrich gains further dimensions in Weimar artist Hanna Hch's photomontage entitled Marlene (1930). In this work, two men view a pair of legs bearing the

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accompanying inscription Marlene. At the same time, the bottom half of a woman's face looks toward the legs. Here Hch suggests both a heterosexual as well as a lesbian following for Marlene.24 The Marlene photomontage articulates a doubled desire: For the female viewer, this choice represents a selection between a female homosexual gaze of desire (directly confronting the delicious lips and the admired name) and a male heterosexual gaze of desire (represented explicitly if somewhat ironically)or both25 (Lavin 84). For female readers, this shifting identification allows women to interrogate traditional gender roles (Petro 119). In contrast to Hchs playful rendition of androgyny, many Weimar critics found woman's supposed masculine disposition and dress to be threatening. Georg von der Vring writes in 1929 that the masculine woman attempts to replace man: Woman wants social equality with man, she wants his abilities and powers, wants to dictate like he does, and possibly replace him (57).26 Wulffen, quoting Alexander Jassny's treatise Zur Psychologie der Verbrecherin (The Psychology of the Female Criminal), also traces the danger of the masculine woman. According to Jassny, Woman suffers under [the conception of inferiority], defends herself against it, and in this battle against the sexual role imposed upon her, she oversteps the mark. A mighty protest grows in her, which takes on a decidedly masculine aspect and may then lead her to criminal acts (qtd. in Wulffen 69). Von der Vring continues his argument by describing the masculine woman: [Woman] looks to achieve the male norm in dress and takes on a brutal signature. Mentally she shows increasing interest and emotionally she is unsentimental. [ ] [L]ove is just a term (57).27 Concerning the look of Weimar's New Woman, the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung ran an article in 1925 entitled Enough is Enough! Against the Masculinization of Women (Nun aber genug! Gegen die Vermnnlichung der Frau), which decried the supposed masculinization of women's fashion: And we observe more often now that the bobbed haircut with its curls is disappearing, to be replaced by the modern, masculine hairstyle: sleek and brushed straight back. The new fashion in women's coats is also decidedly masculine: it would scarcely be noticed this spring if a woman absentmindedly put on her husband's coat (Weimar Republic Sourcebook 659). The Weimar representation of the masculine woman, complete with coat dress, bobbed hair, and career ambitions, was often compared in the press to a more feminine counterpart who would leave the world of business to men and assume the role of proud mother and wife. In a 1927 article for Der Querschnitt (Cross Section), Paul Poiret pits the maternal image against the muchmaligned garon style: Enough with women made of cardboard, the emaciated forms, the pointed shoulders, bosoms without breasts. [ ] I

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see women who are women, [ ] happy and proud mothers, cheerful wives (33).28 The Weimar masculine woman and her feminine counterpart also appear in Asphalt (1929). Asphalt portrays this feminine/masculine juxtaposition in the policeman's devoted mother (Else Heller) and the criminal femme fatale. Similar representations appear in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) with the characters of Maria (Brigitte Helm) and her robot double. Usurping the power of the maternal Maria, the robot uses her sexuality to sabotage the workers' gatherings and seduce the wealthy young gentlemen of Metropolis. Unleashing the robot represents an avalanche of sexuality, manifested in the flooding of the workers' city. Only with great effort can the female robot be suppressed and order restored.29 In addition to Metropolis, the construction of the double found expression in the Weimar press. Articles like Zwillingstreue (Loyalty among Twins) and Doppelmoral (Double Morality) feature competing depictions of desire, often foregrounding the virgin vs. the sexual woman. Performing twins, including the Goode Sisters and the Dolly Sisters, were sexualized pairs, complete with bobbed hair and the popular New Woman look. They promised not a virgin/whore pairing, but a double dose of the sexual woman. The interest in erotic sister pairings was duplicated in the Weimar medical profession, where twins, specifically criminal twins, became a topic of debate. Weimar psychiatrist Johannes Lange's study of criminal twins, Verbrechen als Schicksal (Criminality as Destiny, 1929), shows that a doubled woman does not necessarily signal good and evil. In the case of the identical twins Antonie and Amalie Messer, biology had created the criminal/sexual Doppelgnger. Twins from a strict and orderly family, Antonie and Amalie were guilty of burning their parents' house down and running away to become sexually active. Later in life the two were charged with committing acts of procurement and having extramarital relations. Lange writes about the twins, Sexual carnality and unsteadiness determine their life, which only outwardly takes on different forms. Other guilt in question that the sisters load on themselves is closely related to the sexual life (68).30

Conclusion The preceding discussion of the femme fatale in Weimar and in Hollywood film noir has suggested that the crisis experienced by German directors following World War I led to their subconscious identification with their femme fatale characters. Joseph von Sternberg, himself a

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director who traveled between two worlds, exemplifies this psychic projection: In my films Marlene is not herself. Remember that, Marlene is not Marlene. I am Marlene, she knows that better than anyone (Qtd. in Bronfen 9). With regard to Sternbergs The Blue Angel, Elisabeth Bronfen sees the seductive Lola character as an extension of the director, a refiguration of [Sternbergs] masculine self in a feminine body (9). Applying Freud's discussion of the mourning process, one can understand the femme fatale as a marker of loss and the exiles inner turmoil. The trauma of these directors emerged in disrupted identities caused by a postwar turmoil. The femme fatale as criminal and double portrayed in noir cinema consequently reveals less about the divided nature of woman than about male identity in transition.

Notes

The creation of film noir has been attributed to various influences: the influx of German migrs and the influence of expressionism; the influx of French migrs and the influence of existentialism; Ernest Hemingway and the hard-boiled school of writing; Edward Hopper and the ash can school of painting; prewar photo-journalism, wartime newsreels and post-war neorealism; the creators of KaneCitizens Mankiewicz, Toland and Welles; the Wall Street crash and the rise of populism; the Second World War and the rise of fascism; the Cold War and the rise of McCarthyism. Finally, several critics have pointed, in passing, to a number of even less specific sources, such as general American fears about bureaucracy, the bomb and the big city, as well as one or two more substantial ones, including the industrialisation of the female work-force during the war and the escalating corporatism of American capital throughout the 1940s (Kerr 22122). Some of these influences may be found in Copjec's volume Shades of Noir, in Hirsch's Film Noir, and in Maltbys work. Consult Wegner for a comparison of film noir to German Expressionism. 2 Over 2000 individuals involved in the German film industry, including actors, producers, directors, etc., fled Germany after 1933. These exiles were under constant threat from German officials working in host countries. Many exiles made it to Hollywood, but some artists were murdered in concentration camps. Most of the German film exiles were Jewish. For more information on German film exile, see Horak, Taylor, and Von Babelsberg nach Hollywood.

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Janice Morgan argues that German filmmakers in exile carried their cultural baggage with them to Hollywood: Yet, however lightly they traveled [ ] these filmmakers carried a certain amount of baggage with themcultural, political, aesthetic. [ ] It is this awareness that indelibly left its mark on their best American films (43). It is important to note issues of authorship. In the film noir directed by German migrs, a case may be made for the directors strong influence: Billy Wilder coauthored the films he directed, while Fritz Lang was the chief executive and producer-director of Diana Productions, the company responsible for the noir film Scarlet Street (1944). It is also interesting to consider the B status of many noir films produced in Hollywood. For directors like Edgar Ulmer, working on B film accorded a degree of autonomy which would never have been sanctioned for more expensive studio productions (Kerr 23). 4 das schlichte, unkomplizierte Gefhl; Wenn ein Mensch andauernd seine Gefhle von seinem Verstandesleben abspaltet, so wird das Gefhlsleben darunter leiden. Es wird abgedrngt, in die Tiefe gedrngt, statt mit breiter Flche dem Leben jederzeit offenzustehen. 5 For more information on the New Woman phenomenon, see Von Ankum. 6 Hamid Naficy discusses the aforementioned iconographies of exile. See Home, Exile, Homeland and Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics. 7 Otto Dix, Der Schtzengraben, destroyed in the war. 8 [Dix] scheut keine Brutalitt des Ausdrucks. 9 Otto Dix, Mdchen vor dem Spiegel, destroyed in the war; Otto Dix, Drei Dirnen auf der Strae, private collection, Hamburg. 10 The German original is Angefaulte Zeugen eines Systems skrupelloser Ausbeutung. A more sinister construction of the Weimar sexual woman also stems from Dada proponents Dix and George Grosz. These artists created an extensive Lustmrder (Sexual Murderer) series, portraying naked women who have been badly mutilated. In many of these works, fully clothed men flee the scene leaving behind a slashed-up female body. For more information on this phenomenon, see Lewis and Tatar. 11 The work of German neurologist P.J. Mbius, ber den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (Concerning the Physiological Feeblemindedness of the Female, 1901), and Cesare Lombroso, The Female Offender (1899), provide the foundation for Wulffen's work. I make the association between the above works and Weimar writings on female criminality. 12 See Hales for a discussion of crime and the sexual woman.

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Wenn [ ] die Frau zur Verbrecherin wird, dann erleben wir es, da alle starken Naturtriebe, wie Grausamkeit, Rachsucht, Ha, Eifersucht, Zorn, Wut, bei ihr viel strker zum Durchbruch kommen wie beim Mann. 14 Leslie Pahl, in her dissertation on crime in the Weimar Republic, offers an excellent discussion of the prevalence of Weimar crime and perceptions of the criminal Other. 15 The street itself seems to play the role of prostitute as the protagonist falls under its spell. A 1923 review of The Street likens the street to a seductress: Her glittering, flowing life, her flirting couples and the sites of modern excess have thrown a good citizen off track (Ihr flirrendes, flutendes Leben, ihre flirtenden Paare und die Sttten der modernen Ausschweifungen haben einen braven Spieer aus seiner Bahn geworfen; Vorwrts 10). Wager uses The Street to draw a connection between the Weimar street film and Hollywood film noir. 16 Film noir is defined as a series of American thriller/gangster films of the 1940s and 1950s during which certain highly formalised inflections of plot character and visual style dominated at the expense of narrative coherence and comprehensible solution of a crime (Gledhill 1314). The style of film noir is anxiety-producing since the variables of appearance and reality are conflated (Gledhill 14). 17 The lack of narcissism and its excess are both represented in Doanes argument (The Desire to Desire 42). 18 Doanes coverage of medical discourse cinema in Hollywood includes films in which the female protagonists do not commit crime. Dark Victory (1939), Now Voyager (1942), and Spellbound (1945) feature women who are not involved in criminality. Medical discourse films directed by German migrs like Dark Mirror (1946), The Locket (1946), and Possessed (1947) depict the female criminal. 19 Doane comments on the Cassandra image: And this Cassandra herself is blind, lacking in subjectivity. Because she is the image of doom she cannot see it. The Locket offers a textual demonstration of the obsessive idea that a woman's madness is contagious (The Desire to Desire 59). 20 While the doctors and police remove evil twin Terry at the end of The Dark Mirror, Terrys ominous promise, [we twins] will never be separated, bodes ill for the relationship between Dr. Elliott (Lew Ayres) and twin Ruth. Happy endings in film noir rarely counterbalance the dark foreboding lurking in the mise-en-scne and the narrative. Koepnick notes that the broken mirror in Siodmaks film has a broader implication for reading exile cinema: Similar to Siodmaks The Dark Mirror, the exiles lives in Hollywood were beset with perplexing mirror images and false

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appearances. [ ] [I]t is through their eyes and films that we can best recognize the discontinuous dynamic of German cinema after 1933 (15). 21 Koepnick offers a fascinating reading of Rancho Notorious. He argues that the films theme song is often at odds with the image. This situation distances the viewer, who is forced to oscillate between two meanings (21929). 22 Bronfen argues that The Blue Angel signals a loss of home: [The film] [ ] marks Marlenes seemingly irreversible crossing of a concrete geo-political boundary, i.e., her resolute departure from Germany, for which there would be a poignantly ambivalent homecoming after her death (10). 23 For more information on erotic female relationships, see Ltgens. 24 Hannah Hch, Marlene, photomontage, Collection Dakis Joannou, Athens. 25 Lavin continues, Since both possibilities are represented alluringly within the montage, the female viewer is encouraged to construct herself as androgynous (84). 26 Die Frau will gesellschaftliche Gleichstellung mit dem Manne, will seine Fhigkeiten und Befugnisse, will diktieren wie er, und vielleicht ihn ersetzen. 27 [Die Frau] sucht die Norm der Mnnerkleidung zu erreichen und eignet sich eine brutale Handschrift an. Geistig zeigt sie gesteigertes Interesse, und seelisch gibt sie sich unsentimental. [ ] Liebe ist ein Begriff. 28 Schlu mit den Frauen aus Carton, den abgezehrten Formen, den spitzen Schultern, den Busen ohne Brste. [ ] Ich sehe Frauen die Frauen sind [ ] freudige und stolze Mtter, frohgestimmte Gattinnen. 29 For a discussion of the relationship of woman/nature/machine/otherness, see Huyssen 6870, 7778. 30 Sexuelle Triebhaftigkeit und Haltlosigkeit bestimmten ihren Lebensgang, der sich nur uerlich in etwas verschiedenen Formen abspielt. Was die Schwestern sonst noch an fraglicher Schuld auf sich laden, steht mit dem Sexualleben in engstem Zusammenhang.

Works Cited Allen, Virginia M. The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon. Troy, New York: Whitston Publishing Co., 1983. Aschaffenburg, G. Das Verbrechen und seine Bekmpfung. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universittsbuchhandlung, 1923.

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Bronfen, Elisabeth. Seductive Departures of Marlene Dietrich: Exile and Stardom in The Blue Angel. New German Critique 89 (2003): 931. Die Bchse der Pandora. Welt am Abend 2 Nov. 1929. Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir: A Reader. London: Verso, 1993. Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. . Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1991. Elsaesser, Thomas. A German Ancestry to Film Noir? Film History and its Imaginary. Iris 21 (1996): 12943. Enke, Elisabeth. Das gespaltene Ich: Merkwrdige Vorgnge in unserer Seele. Uhu 7.2 (Nov. 1930): 5358. Enough is Enough! Against the Masculinization of Women. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Eds. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 659. Fischer, Lucy. Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Freud, Sigmund. Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth P, 195374. 24358. Gemnden, Gerd and Anton Kaes. Introduction. New German Critique 89 (2003): 38. Gledhill, Christine. Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism. Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, 1978. 621. Hales, Barbara. Blonde Satan: Weimar Constructions of the Criminal Femme Fatale. Commodities of Desire: The Prostitute in Modern German Literature. Ed. Christiane Schnfeld. Rochester: Camden House, 2000. 13152. Hirsch, Foster. Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen. New York: Da Capo P, 1981. Horak, Jan-Christopher. Exilfilm, 1933-1945: In der Fremde. Geschichte des deutschen Films. Eds. Wolfgang Jacobsen, Anton Kaes, and Hans Helmut Prinzler. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1993. 10118. Huyssen, Andreas. The Vamp and the Machine: Fritz Lang's Metropolis. After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 6581. Kerr, Paul. Out of What Past? Notes on the B Film Noir. The Hollywood Film Industry: A Reader. Ed. Paul Kerr. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 22044. Koepnick, Lutz. The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood. Berkeley: U. of California P, 2002.

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Polan, Dana. Power and Paranoia: History, Narrative, and the American Cinema, 194050. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. Samuelsdorff, Anny. Die Kriminalitt der Frau. Generalanzeiger fr Dortmund 14 Sep. 1930: 8. Schneickert, Hans. Das Weib als Erpresserin und Anstifterin. Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Sexualforschung Band I/Heft 6. Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag, 1918/19. Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. Woodstock: Overlook P, 1992. Simmel, Ernst. War Neuroses and Psychic Trauma. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Eds. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. 78. Tatar, Maria. Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995. Taylor, John Russell. Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigrs 19331950. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. Telotte, J. P. Siodmak's Phantom Women and Noir Narrative. Film Criticism 11.3 (1987): 110. . Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1989. Turim, Maureen. Fictive Psyches: The Psychological Melodrama in 40s Films. Boundary 2.3 (1984): 321331. Verstimmte Frauen: Seelische Abweichungen durch Generationsvorgnge. Berliner Tageblatt 23 Sep. 1930: 1. Beiblatt. Von Ankum, Katharina, ed. Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. Von Babelsberg nach Hollywood: Filmemigranten aus Nazideutschland. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1987. Vring, Georg von der. Offensive der Frau. Die Frau von morgen wie wir sie wnschen: Eine Essaysammlung aus dem Jahre 1929. Ed. Friedrich M. Huebner. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1990. 5559. Vorwrts: PressestimmenDie Strasse. Berlin: Hansa Film Verleih, 1923. 10. Wager, Jans B. Dangerous Dames: Women and Representation in the Weimar Street Film and Film Noir. Athens: Ohio UP, 1999. Wegner, Hart. From Expressionism to Film Noir: Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends. Journal of Popular Film Television 11.2 (1983): 5665. Weinberger, Hofrat Dr. Prostitution und Kriminalitt. Kriminalistische Monatshefte: Zeitschrift fr die gesamte kriminalistische Wissenschaft und Praxis 2.3 (March 1928): 5759.

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