Keechie: Femme Formidable :: Film Movie Essays

Keechie Femme FormidableINSTRUCTORS COMMENT This is an extraordinarily accomplished essay beautifully written, critically perceptive, and nicely related to the critical discourse on Altman and pip noir. Saving the quotation from Anderson for the very end is a nice touch because it brings the reader back to the frame of reference the process of adaptation. The little note well-nigh first shots of Cora in two versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice makes an extremely clear point of comparison with which to think about Altmans very disparate agenda. A fine, fine piece of work, of which you should be very proud. In an article entitled Night and Day, Robert Philip Kolker distinguishes a transformation of the gangster film from the genres received film noir elements. He places Robert Altmans Thieves Like Us, an adaptation of Edward Andersons 1937 crime novel, amongst this subgenre on account of the films antigeneric mise-en-scene. While Altmans departure from the classic film noir fo rm has often been analyzed by film critics, the noir heroine--who is generally central to the plot--has received little (if any) attention. Further, even though faithfulness to the original text pervades adaptation discourse as a major criterion for judging the cinematic counterpart, critics have often overlooked Altmans most noteworthy change to Andersons grim story Keechie survives in the end. In fact, the film tends to be comp ared more with Nichols Rays preceding film version than with the novel. However, in his manipulation of film noir genre conventions, Altman not only constructs a lighter, more open world, he creates a corresponding heroine who likewise transforms the characteristics of the noir charwoman.1Women in Film Noir, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, provides the framework from which an examination of Keechies character can be drawn. Throughout the volume several distinctions are made between the two categories of women in film noir. While the femme fatale is characterized as a combination of sexuality and aggressiveness which inevitably makes her an obstacle to the male quest, the prehend archetype--woman as redeemer--is depicted as a means of integration for the hero into both his environment and himself. However much control either type of woman may exhibit throughout the course of the film, by the end of it is relinquished. They are either restored to their prescribed positions in patriarchy2 or destroyed. Keechie both manifests and opposes selective qualities attributed to the femme fatale and the nurturing woman (as she is referred to in the Kaplan text).