The vamp woman, or femme fatale (from the French la femme fatale) is an epithet that is awarded to the most seductive and insidious ladies in many works of literature and cinema.
Artistic image
The image of a vamp woman has an ancient history. The prototype of the femme fatale in cinema was Salome - the Jewish princess, the daughter of Herodias and Herod Boeth, the queen of Chalcis and Lesser Armenia. The image of Salome is at the center of the films of Gordon Edwards (1918), Charles Bryant (1923), Carmelo Bene (1972), William Dieterle (1953), Pedro Almodovar (1978), Ken Russell (1998 g.), Karsola Saura (2002). The image of the femme fatale was sung in the works of Oscar Wilde and Edvard Munch, Goethe, Coleridge, Keats.
In silent films, the femme fatale was portrayed as an insatiable sexual vampire, hence the American synonym for the French term "vamp". The image of a vamp woman was an integral part of film noir, the genre of American cinema of the 40-50s, characterized by an atmosphere of mistrust, cynicism, and disappointment that was characteristic of American society in this historical period. In these films, the vamp woman is a classic image of a kind of predator who spreads the web of her lies for the main character. Often, the connection with such a character ends very badly for the hero.
The fatal love of a vamp woman is a man's trap; seductive, insatiable in bed and certainly two-faced - this is how the image of the fatal beauty was traditionally formed. She challenges the traditional, patriarchal order of society, using her intelligence, courage and resourcefulness, cunning and deceit. Communication with her is destructive for members of the opposite sex, who are unable to resist fatal sexuality. By the way, often the classic femme fatale becomes such after a fatal offense inflicted by her former love.
The classic image of the predator is represented by Barbara Stanwick in films of the 40s of the last century, for example, "Double Insurance" (1944). Anne Sadwidge played both a predator and a prey rolled into one in Detour (1945). Rita Hayworth embodied the image of the femme fatale in the films The Lady of Shanghai and Gilda, and the heroine of the movie Sin Street (1945), played by Joanne Bennett, boldly destroys the career of a talented artist.
Modern vamp woman
Now the image of a vamp woman is no longer so unambiguous. A femme fatale can be called a representative of the fair sex with intelligence, grasp, beauty and an inner core, the one for whom a man is ready, figuratively speaking, to move mountains and put the whole world at her feet.
But it is absolutely not necessary for a vamp woman to turn out to be two-faced and ruin her faithful, deftly manipulating him to achieve her goals. As for the appearance, many believe that the indispensable external attributes of a vamp woman are bright makeup, red lips and long pointed nails, a kind of symbol of a predatory lady.
