Film noir the most influential of the early noirs. A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in "Gilda" (1946), Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), Ava Gardner in "The Killers" (1946), and Jane Greer in "Out of the Past" (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and "Murder, My Sweet" (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined
Portrayal of women in film noir Cora in "The Postman Always Rings Twice", 1946, she “exhibits a remarkable series of unmotivated character switches and roles.” In her introductory shot she is seen as a sex bomb, a desired sex object through the narrators eyes, yet she juxtaposes this vision as a hard working woman, then a “loving playmate in an adulterous relationship; a fearful girl in need of protection, [a] victim of male power; [a] hard, ruthless murderess; [a] mother-to-be;” then following that she is a sacrifice to the judicial system. This inconsistency can be seen as a parallel to the unsureness of the hero’s trajectory,