Frequent in film noir are the binary oppositions between the characters' personalities and the visually compelling images that often explode on screen before the audience's eyes. The bright lighting of a beautiful countryside, the muted lighting of a big city, a face half-consumed by shadows or a woman dressed in white with a soft angelic glow can say as much as an entire scene of dialogue . But some of the most discussed and debated elements of film noir concern the opposing roles between femme fatales and good girls. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayAt first glance, the femme fatale appears to be a figure of pure malevolence: lying, cheating, and killing to get her way to at the top in pursuit of a position of wealth and power. But upon closer inspection, we see that the actions of the femme fatale are often motivated by a painful past, an unhealthy relationship with an abusive lover, or a multitude of other reasons. Just as femme fatales cannot be called purely evil, neither can the good girls who stand opposite them on screen be called completely innocent. Unlike the domination of femme fatales, it is often easy to overlook much more minor acts. of deception, but many good girls in film noir are much more complex than they seem: from dishonesty to disguises, good girls in film noir are often pursued by the protagonist in the end, because they represent a compromise realistic somewhere between excess. femme fatales and the purity or boredom of a true “good girl”. Opposed to the intense sexuality of femme fatales, good girls seem “desexualized,” dressing in a rather conservative manner (Oliver, Trigo 29). Ann Grayle from Murder, My Sweet, for example, dresses primarily in cotton or tweed ensembles of singular colors, never showing any thigh as Helen Grayle does to attract the attention of Philip Marlowe. Lola Dietrichson from Double Indemnity dresses similarly, as does Ann Miller from Out of the Past who never wears a low-cut outfit like femme fatale Kathie Moffat; Ann's shirts and blouses always cling to her neck above the collarbone and she never even reveals her forearms. This basic conservative dress code for good girls conceals their sexuality, placing them in figurative shadows behind the brightness and urgency of women's. It is therefore hardly surprising that these good girls have little or no impact on the protagonists at the beginning of each story (although Philip Marlowe occasionally comments on Ann Grayle's "pretty figure"). Instead, what's more impactful than the femme fatales' overt sexuality are the bad-girl tendencies of good girls that lurk beneath their conservative clothing. Not to be ogled by every man who crosses their path, good girls rebel in their own way, but subtly. In Double Indemnity, when we first meet Lola, she is innocently playing Chinese checkers with her stepmother Phyllis. After getting bored of the game, Lola tells her father that she is going roller skating with a friend and leaves the house after promising him that she will not see the delinquent Nino Zachetti. But after insurer Walter Neff leaves the house that evening, saying goodbye to Mr. Dietrichson and Phyllis, he opens his car door and finds Lola sitting inside. She informs Neff that she has no plans to go rollerblading, but needs a ride. Forso she can meet Nino Zachetti for their date. Our first glimpse of Lola is that of an innocent young girl, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, but we quickly discover that beneath her conservative outfit, her soft, high-pitched voice and fluttering eyelashes , she is a woman who does not want to. surrender to the demands of his father's patriarchal authority. A similar situation of mistaken identity occurs after Marriott's death in Murder, My Sweet. Detective PhilippeMarlowe is immediately "confronted by a woman claiming to be a reporter who wants more information", but as Marlowe soon discovers, she is actually Ann Grayle (Palmer 77). Much like Lola's innocence in her first appearance, Ann Grayle is gentle in her approach towards Marlowe. She is calm, cool, and collected, but the fact that Marriott's death has just happened is what warns Marlowe. When he insists on visiting the Grayle household with Ann, Marlowe and the audience quickly forget about Ann as bombshell Helen comes to the fore, her imposing, hypersexualized screen presence instantly casting a shadow over the "good girl" Ann. , thus placing it in the background. In the cases of Lola and Ann, we can clearly see that this good girl persona is just that: an act, dress, or disguise put on to hide their true identities or motives. They're neither overtly threatening nor deviant (especially compared to femme fatales), but they certainly have more to say than our first impressions. Adding to our notions of goodness or innocence is the fact that Marlowe and Neff call Lola and Ann “child” throughout both films; Marlowe himself “repeatedly wonders about the fate of the ‘kid’…” (Palmer 81). We would normally associate the word “child” with a certain form of purity or childlike innocence. So when Lola and Ann are called "child" by the protagonists, it reinforces their good-girl persona and we still see them as relatively pure. unlike the femme fatales who control the screen. In Out of the Past, it's easy to see Jeff's Bridgeport love interest, Ann Miller, as a boring, flat character compared to Kathie Moffat's. But like Lola, Ann Miller also rebels against patriarchal authority. We hear her mother and father shouting their disapproval of Ann's relationship with Jeff when we first meet. And when Jeff is later accused of murder, Ann yells at her father, refusing to talk to him about Jeff or the current situation. Following this, Ann sneaks out of her house early one morning to meet Jeff in the woods, even though he is chased by both the cops and Whit. During their brief meeting, they are spied on by Jim who himself represents the law; Faced with these risks and consequences, Ann always asks Jeff to go on the run with him. Although Ann Miller, Lola Dietrichson, and Ann Grayle have the abilities to be both deceptive and provocative, one thing remains constant in all three. films: they both provide a sense of comfort to the protagonists while representing a life of normalcy, balanced somewhere between good and bad girl characters. In Out of the Past, Jeff's flashback story in the car with Ann "serves to situate Jeff's affair with Kathie as the traumatic past that he must repress in order to live a 'normal life'" (Krutnik 104). Author Leighton Grist sees Jeff's affair with Kathie as a transformation from a "seeker hero" to that of a "victim hero" (207). As a victim, Jeff tries to confront not only the law and Whit, but he also attempts to absolve himself of all his wrongdoings and lies through his repentance and admission to.