Keechie: Femme Formidable :: Film Movie Essays

Keechie: Femme Formidable INSTRUCTOR'S COMMENT: This is an extraordinarily accomplished essay: beautifully written, critically perceptive, and nicely related to the critical discourse on Altman and film 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 about 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 Altman's very different 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 genre's conventional film noir elements. He places Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, an adaptation of Edward Anderson's 1937 crime novel, amongst this subgenre on account of the film's antigeneric mise-en-scene. While Altman's departure from the classic film noir form 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 Altman's most noteworthy change to Anderson's grim story: Keechie survives in the end. In fact, the film tends to be compared more with Nichols Ray's preceding film version than with the novel. However, in his manipulation of film noir genre conventions, Altman not only constructs a lighter, mor e open world, he creates a corresponding heroine who likewise transforms the characteristics of the noir woman.[1] Women in Film Noir, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, provides the framework from which an examination of Keechie's 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 appropriate 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 patriarchy[2] 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).