Essay --

It may depend that the male characters in classical cinema atomic number 18 given indicant and control over female characters, but the relationships between characters in billystick Wilders 1944 noir Double Indemnity and Michael Curtizs 1945 drama Mildred perforate are complex and do non conform to specific sex roles. Rather, both of these films feature female characters that are both controllers and the controlled. The characters Mildred Pierce and Phyllis Dietrichson need both of these roles in their respective films but are inverses of each some other Mildred acts strongly and self-supportingly but is actually controlled emotionally and financially by others, while Phyllis is presented as submissive but is the grand manipulator. As such, these cardinal films present different images of the independent woman, both of which are destined for failure. On the surface, it seems like Mildred Pierce undergoes a positive transformation and develops into an independent woman. At the beginning of Mildreds first narrated flashback, she describes her life as little more than cooking and washing and having children. She works as a housewife. Her attire and surroundings reflect this her first interaction in the flashback is with her husband in the kitchen with an forestage on. Berts departure pressures Mildred to enter to workforce to support her family and their wants. Her wardrobe changes to pay this change, also, since she is usually seen in working clothes. She builds the motivation to start her own restaurant and eventually starts her own successful restaurant chain, and once again, her physical demeanor changes in that she is dressed in fancy clothes. Once she understands that her marriage with Bert would lessened her financially, she actively seeks a divorce fr... ...nity and Mildred Pierce have two models of the independent woman, but both of them fail in the end. Mildreds love disport dies and her daughter is sent to prison. Phyllis is murdered by Walter. It would seem that the messages of these films are stand for by the failures of these women. Mildred could not fly her maternal instinct as it finished her life. Phyllis treated people like tools and met a fatal end. Independence from men, then, is not the final goal for these women on the road to happiness. These films represent this trait as shallow, since not only do these failures arise, but Mildred and Phyllis never truly escape the male gaze. The notions of independence presented in these two films lead to disaster because they are incomplete independence from men is a necessary step, but on that point is still more that the women in the films need to accomplish.