A Place In The Sun

It was tough this week to just select one topic to chose to write on. Ultimately I decided to chose an idea I had that we did not discuss in class and is a left-of-field idea. In the process of watching the film, several noir-like elements kept constantly surfacing such as the dark shadows and silouettes and the case of murder itself, but one question I pondered was: To what extent can Angela Vickers be viewed as a 'femme fatale'?
On outward appearances, the arguement can be made that she is not what is classically considered to be a femme fatale, Elizabeth Taylor is not the stereotypical blonde bombshell with the sharp and quick humour combined with the smoldering stare and sense of danger that surrounds her. In fact, she is one of the few characters in this film who is almost always well lit and with very few instances when shadows creep across her face. Her general attitude and behaviour as well is not on first examination aligned to that of the stereotypical femme fatale, she seems breezy, naive and most crucially of all to set her apart from the femme fatale, innocent.
Whilst watching, however, certain lines of her dialogue slowly began to make me view her as a femme fatale character. With such lines as "Tell Mamma" before kissing George, demonstrating an idea that she knows how to manipulate him by talking like his mother and then expressing a desire to, "Show you (George) off" demonstrates the idea that she's treating him like an object, and being a rich society girl, she carries herself like she is entitled to all the good things in life such as the lavish holiday we see her on and the attractive man. Although, I thought her most interesting line in the whole film was "Are they watching?"at the party when they first kiss, she is obviously slightly embarrased to be seen with him, eventhough they are roughly on the same level of social standing.
Perhaps the best way to look at her character with regards to a femme fatale is the fact that she is responsible for the breaking down on the relationship between George and Alice by inticing him in with her charms and causing George to murder Alice in order to be with her (feel free to take me up on that debate). Now this clearly indicates a femme fatale character, however, it has to be said that she is unaware of the relationship and the turmoil she has caused, a true femme fatale would be aware of her destructive actions and be doing it all for sport, enjoying her power over the man. Angela, however, is innocent of her "crime" and arguably she does genuinly seem to love George, she is all ready to deny her father's authority so that she can be happy with him, she even visits him in jail before his execution, despite what he has done, a true femme fatale would have just left him alone to suffer his fate.
In conclusion, it is obvious that Angela is not a femme-fatale, but rather a clever subversion of the notion of such a stereotypical character and is one of the few innocent characters in the whole film.