In the 1940s and 1950s, the female seeker hero was a new twist in storytelling, and she was
unique to film noir.
Like the male seeker she is plucked out of her
mundane existence by a crime and set on the path to its resolution . . . but
unlike the male, she wasn’t looking for adventure to begin with.
Also
unlike the male, the female or wifelet seeker hero has a defined role to
begin with — wife — sister —or daughter (as in Destination Murder) —
and she takes the evil urban streets and underbellies of noir as an
ingénue, having her eyes opened as she bluffs her way towards
resolution.
It was an idea that began with Jamaica Inn, a specifically 'woman's film' (Hollywood has to categorise everything in order to meet audience expectation and recoup its costs, with profit).
In film noir, there is a lot to upturn regarding women's roles however, and in Destination Murder, the family, the locus of woman's oppression is broken up by a murder. I say that the family is where women have been oppressed, because it's in the family that they function not as people but as ideological entities, wife, mother, daughter, nurse and so on.
Well, Destination Murder may not be a high art, or even very good, but it does present this minor idea from the era, which is that with the family under threat, it is for the first time the job of the woman to trod the dark paths of crime, towards public resolution.
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| Stanley Clements |
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| Albert Dekker |
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| Joyce Mackenzie |
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| Hurd Hadfield |
