To what extent does Cora fit into the role of the femme fatale?
The audience is first introduced to Cora in the perspective of the film’s main protagonist, Frank. The first we see from her is not her face, but her legs. The camera’s movement mimics Frank’s point of view as it traces back to the point from which the lipstick rolled away. After we see Frank’s astonished face, we are introduced to the beautiful Cora. Cora is presented as to how other femme fatales are presented in other film noirs. She is shown from a male-gaze, which makes the viewers equally feel Frank’s astonishment of her physical beauty, regardless of the viewer’s gender.
An example of this can be seen in the scene from “Gilda,” where Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is introduced to Gilda (Rita Hayworth).
After Frank picks up her lipstick, Cora expects Frank to come to her so she could get her lipstick back, instead of her going to him. This detail already establishes Cora’s demanding personality. After having to walk to Frank to retrieve her lipstick, Cora intentionally makes herself shown to him while she applies lipstick in a carefree manner even though she is fully aware that Frank is ogling her. Her body language indicates that she does not completely hate his obvious lustful stare, but rather enjoys it in a way as she finds herself in control over him. Her action could also be interpreted as her way of punishing Frank for not being submissive towards her.
Cora continues to refuse Frank’s advances, but her circumstances make it quite hard for her to turn him down. In the book, Cora had come to Los Angeles in order to pursue her ambitions but had ended up in the disillusionment of her American dreams of wealth and success. "I won a beauty contest. I won a high school beauty contest, in Des Moines. That's where I lived. The prize was a trip to Hollywood. I got off the Chief with fifteen guys taking my picture, and two weeks later I was in the hash house" (Cain, 14).
As an attempt to make something out of herself, she married Nick who turned out to be an unsatisfactory husband who cares more about the price of beef than the needs of his beautiful young wife. The one thing that Cora seem to enjoy about her marriage is that she is given a rural diner/service station to manage. This financial asset she holds is also what deters her from running away with Frank, who she assumes will make her conditions even worse. This shows that Cora values her job more than love. Throughout the film, Cora continuously expresses her desire to make something of herself and the diner. Her determination to achieve success from the diner is so strong that Nick’s unexpected news for Cora leaves her with a stone-cold expression and leads her to become suicidal momentarily. It is from this point on that Cora is ever more determined to get rid of Nick, which is a stark comparison to her previous inactions when Frank convinced her to run away with him, or her fast withdrawal after the first failed attempt of murdering Nick. This is because while the first two incidents were primarily driven by her dull marriage and her discovery of a new love interest, the latter was what Cora saw as the sole resolution as Nick has now become a threat to her career. Her ambitions drive her to manipulate Frank into killing Nick, and this narrative of the film establishes a theme which equates ambitious women to being manipulative and destructive. This theme becomes more understandable when considering the social and historical context of the era in which the film was produced. While being independent and demanding, Cora is also, in certain ways, manipulative and irresponsible. She convinces Frank into a second attempt of murder and Frank is eventually led to doing the dirty work that Cora had planned to do by herself in the first place. These traits that Cora possess and her fatal ending are what places her in the role of a femme fatale.
2. In what ways does Nick fit the Noir protagonist’s role?
Considering several traits that Nick possess in the film, it is possible to see him as a Noir protagonist. Although he is not physically fit, he does have the intelligence suitable for a male noir protagonist. This can be inferred from the way he converses with people and the fact that he owns a diner shows his ability to run a business. Like many other male protagonists, he also has an alpha-male persona in which he asserts his dominance over his female subordinates. He refuses to let Cora have what she wants, which is to run the diner and instead forces her to leave for Canada to look after his ill sister. Meanwhile, he is also easily led astray by her wife’s manipulation and fails to see the affair between her and Frank. This ultimately leads to his death.
3. Describe how technical/aesthetic characteristics of Noir are evident in this film and give specific examples.
- Showing bare legs of women in the 1940s cinema was a scene which aroused sexual tension. - Eyes are naturally first drawn to the brightest point of a frame. In this case, the brightest point comes from the white colored crop top and short shorts that Lana Turner wears. This leads the audience’s view to her bare stomach and legs. - This kind of shot is seen in a scene where Marlowe meets Carmen Sternwood in “The Big Sleep.” - Also, the camera is placed behind Garfield so the viewers share his POV, and share his stance, which is essentially a sexually aroused man who ogles her without guilt or shame.
Low-key lighting
Lots of shadows and high contrasts
Shadows create lots of shapes and patterns in the background and over the characters
This low-key lighting style, known as “Chiaroscuro,” derives from the Renaissance paintings. This style uses strong tonal contrast between light and dark
While John and Lana’s faces are mostly in shadows, there is just enough light on their facial features to show their expressions. With a minimal amount of light stressing the flexing facial muscles and features, the Chiaroscuro technique dramatizes their expressions.
This low-key lighting also has the effect of “obscuring the action and deglamorizing the star,” putting more emphasis on the composition rather than the actor.
The actors and setting are given equal lighting emphasis. This is one of the film noir’s recurring techniques. While the famous Warner Brothers lighting of the thirties had the central character be accentuated by a heavy shadow, in film noir, central characters are likely to be standing in the shadow. By doing so, the environment is given an equal or greater weight than the actor, which creates a fatalistic and hopeless mood.
The time setting of the night and shadows it brings emphasizes the cold and darkness in noirs. It also creates a fatalistic and hopeless mood, which is a visual match for the theme of the film noir. Even the scenes where Cora and Frank visit the beach, which is really the only place they have ever been happy throughout the film, take place at night.
This again creates a fatalistic mood, which, in a sense, forbodes the fate of both characters.
As in German Expressionism, horizontal and vertical lines jut from various sides, as well as oblique lines. Oblique lines tend to splinter a screen, giving an effect of instability and restlessness. The vertical lines in the background in both shots, where one is created from the stair railing and the other is the shadow of prison bars, mirrors the feeling of entrapment that the characters feel in their current situations. This kind of German Expressionist aesthetic can be spotted in other film noirs, such as the scene below from “The Stranger on the Third Floor.”
4. Explain with details and examples how the narrative of this film is typical of Noir. First of all, the narrative follows the typical first-person narration of a film noir. Frank, the main protagonist, narrates the plot which led to his current state. The plot is in a classical Todorovian three-act structure like most of the film noirs which includes three stages. The first is the set-up or the introduction stage, during which the main characters (Cora, Frank, Nick, D.A) are introduced. It is also during this stage where conflicts between characters arise. Frank finds Cora unconquerable for her marriage and ambitions which she is not willing to sacrifice for Frank. Frank sees Nick as an obstacle and both agree to kill him. This takes place in the latter part of the second stage, which is the confrontation of rising action. Frank and Cora meet their resolution, being the third and final stage of the plot, through death (although Frank is not quite dead yet) which already seemed predestined for their sexually motivated choices and immorality.
5. Which Noir themes are best expressed in The Postman Always Rings Twice?
Fatalism: the impossibility of escaping one’s character or fate
Lust/temptation destroys an honest young man
“Sexual thrills come with a cost”
The plot of the film heavily revolves around the theme of fatalism, and this is obviously shown through the first person narration of the film’s protagonist, Frank. Frank narrates his story at a point where his time for the gas chamber is nearing, and at times he states how he shouldn’t have stayed at Twin Oaks for it would bring him his current situation where he faces death. The film also suggests that lust and temptation destroys an honest man, which is the case for Frank. Frank is shown to be easily led astray by women. He is immediately infatuated by Cora’s beauty and is not hesitant to express his affections and make physical contact while knowing that she is a married woman. He also flirts with an unknown woman with the excuse of fixing her car, to which the audience’s reaction is reflected through lawyer Keat’s look of disgust. His temporary engagement with the woman is what later puts a dent to his relationship with Cora, leading to her testing Frank’s trustworthiness by taking a trip to the beach. On the way of coming back, Frank is distracted by Cora’s kiss and forgets to look front while he drives. This results in a car accident followed by Cora’s death and Frank being charged with murder. The ending of the film is almost like a moral lesson which suggests that sexual thrills come with a cost.
6. Choose a scene to examine the genre and write an analysis in terms of functionality. How does this scene function to represent or deal with Society at the time the film was made? ( You may research this part but do not plagiarize! If you use another’s thoughts, cite them with in text citations) You might choose to use a Marxist approach if that is appropriate.
The scene that I’ve chosen to analyze is around 23 to 24 minutes of the film, where Cora and Frank decides to run away from Nick to start a new life. They first embark on the journey with happiness and optimism of the future, but later on, Cora loses the strength and optimism she had in the first place. This is shown from how Cora’s white skirt and shoes become stained with dirt and mud and her hair becomes messy. Cora later tells Nick that she is no longer willing to take the risk and run away. She further expresses her fear of being left penniless if she divorces Nick, saying that he’ll never give her a nickel or the Twin Oaks. No matter how much Frank loves her and how tired she is of Nick, Cora is still haunted by the fears of financial instability. The dialogue also shows that she distastes the idea of Frank being in a low position, and expects him to at least be a manager. Considering the time of the film’s release, it could be said that this scene reflects the post-war disillusionment felt by the American society in the late 1940s. Cora mirrors the housewives/ female factory employees who had tasted independence from their job, and her ambitions do not bring much good when considering the film’s ending. The tragic fate of Cora might be the social justice that the film tries to accomplish by terminating the independently-turned woman who has an affair with a man while her husband remains ignorant. This is a common plot in many noir films, and Paul Schrader explains that “the disillusionment that many soldiers, small businessmen, and housewife/factory employees felt in returning to a peacetime economy was directly mirrored in the sordidness of the urban crime film (Schrader, 268).” The film’s cynicism is reflected from how Cora chooses financial stability over love and freedom.