Mike, however, seems unimpressed, as he proceeds to invade her space by sitting on her bed without invitation, and listening to her story about her relationship with Christina, which we will later find out to be a lie. Moreover, when Mike knocks on her door, we see her extracting a gun, definitively signaling her dangerous nature. This image is immediately establishing both her unknowability, enhanced by the camera angle, and her unmistakably feminine sexuality, resulting in a voyeuristic look at a woman caught in a private moment, reading a newspaper in her bed. The first image we see of her is shot from the back, which allows us to see only the back of her head and one exposed leg, our vision partially obstructed by the bedframe. The pseudo- femme fatale in question is introduced rather late in Kiss Me Deadly, when Mike Hammer, during his investigation of the unknown reasons that caused the death of a woman named Christina, finds a lead that takes him to her supposed roommate: Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers).
In Kiss Me Deadly what men don’t know can, indeed, hurt them. This pattern becomes self-reflexive in Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), often pinpointed as the final true film noir, because of the way in which it exposes, mocks and deconstructs the expectations related to the genre and ultimately (and literally) sets them on fire. In this peculiar space, protected by their status of unknowability, women in film noir have a privileged access to “the great whatsit” that propels the narrative, which makes them unassumingly deadly. Reduced to spectacle, dismissed as unknowable, these women can act undetected under the gaze of men who can never see them beyond their assumptions and beyond their physical surface.
In a film noir, it is precisely this assumption which allows femmes fatales to be as dangerous as they are. “What I don’t know can’t hurt me”, protagonist Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) naively assumes at the beginning of Kiss Me Deadly (1955). We hope the celebration of this incredible director -and these classic films – inspire others to find new cinema they love and share their discoveries with others. 0 #CriterionMonth How ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ exposes the myth of the femme fatale and sets it on fireĬriterion Month is a massive collaboration across 5 websites in honor of Ingmar Bergman’s 100th birthday and of the films of the Criterion Collection.
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