FEMMES FATALES

Delilah, Judith, Mata Hari, Morgana le Fay… examples of the age-old dangerous female using her charms and wiles, and woe betide the man who falls under her spell. A genre with more than hints of misogyny but also female empowerment. The 40s with Film Noir was the heyday of the sexy scheming irresistibly alluring femme fatale who would toy with the hapless doomed male, but with some great predecessors and later, sometimes violent, variations. Jeanne Dielman is hardly the archetype, which is partly the point. I’ve included The Band Wagon on the list for the Girl Hunt: Mystery in Jazz sequence, one of the greatest in cinema, a...