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Best Femme fatale Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of femme fatale cinema — measured across 1,788 indexed frames from 27 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Femme fatale films over-index on fedora, cigarette and blinds — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Double Indemnity (1944)

    Billy WilderDP John F. SeitzIMDb 8.3TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man.

  2. 2

    Chinatown (1974)

    Roman PolanskiDP John A. AlonzoIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1937 Los Angeles, private investigator Jake 'J.J.' Gittes specializes in cheating-spouse cases. His current target is Hollis Mulwray, high-profile chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, whose wife suspects him of infidelity. In following Mulwray, Gittes witnesses some usual business dealings, such as a public meeting for construction of a new dam to create additional water supply for Los Angeles, as fresh water is vital to the growing community during the chronic drought; Mulwray opposes the dam. Eventually Gittes sees Mulwray meeting with an unknown young woman who isn't his wife. Once news of the supposed tryst between Mulwray and this woman hits the media, additional information comes to light that makes Gittes believe that Mulwray is being framed for something and that he himself is being set up. In his investigation of the issue behind Mulwray's framing and his own setup, Gittes is assisted by Mulwray's wife Evelyn, but he thinks she isn't being forthright with him. The further he gets into the investigation, the more secrets he uncovers about the Mulwrays' professional and personal dealings, including Mulwray's former business-partnership with Evelyn's father, Noah Cross. The identity of the unknown woman may be the key to uncovering the whole story.

  3. 3

    The Killing (1956)

    Stanley KubrickDP Lucien BallardIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    After just being released from a five-year stint in prison, Johnny Clay has assembled a five-man team, including two insiders, to carry out what he estimates will be a $2 million heist at Lansdowne Racetrack, the take to be split five ways, minus expenses. Besides Johnny, none of the men truly are criminals in the typical sense. In addition to the other four team members, Johnny has hired two men outside of the team to carry out specific functions for a flat fee; the other four will not meet the two men for hire or know who they are, while the two men for hire will not be told of the bigger picture of the heist. None involved are to tell anyone, even their loved ones, about the job. Each of the five have a specific reason for wanting his share of the money: Johnny, in wanting to get married to his longtime girlfriend Fay, the two who have known each other since they were kids, realizes that to live comfortably, he has to shoot for the moon instead of carrying out the penny-ante stuff that put him behind bars; Marvin Unger, a bookkeeper who is bankrolling the plan, is doing it out of his friendship and loyalty to Johnny; Randy Kennan, a crooked police officer, is already late with his repayment to a loan shark; Mike O'Reilly, one of the track's bartenders, wants to be able to provide better overall care, most importantly medical, to his bedridden wife, Ruthie O'Reilly; and milquetoast George Peatty, one of the track's ticket clerks, is trying to buy back the love of his shrew of a wife of five years, Sherry Peatty, if he ever had her love at all. The elaborate plan requires meticulous timing by all seven men. Beyond any unforeseen problems causing the plan to fail, what the other four team members are unaware of is that weak-minded George told Sherry of the broad issue that he will be involved in a heist in an effort to hold on to her emotionally; she, in turn, told her boyfriend Val Cannon, with Sherry and Val having their own ideas of absconding with the entire take of the heist after the fact.

  4. 4

    L.A. Confidential (1997)

    Curtis HansonDP Dante SpinottiIMDb 8.2TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    1950's Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley, the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White, ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes, always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the dark world of L.A. crime.

  5. 5

    Out of the Past (1947)

    Jacques TourneurDP Nicholas MusuracaIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story. Flashback: Once, Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco, where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling. Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed.

  6. 6

    Basic Instinct (1992)

    Paul VerhoevenDP Jan de BontIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    A former rock star, Johnny Boz, is brutally killed during sex, and the case is assigned to detective Nick Curran of the SFPD. During the investigation, Nick meets Catherine Tramell, a crime novelist who was Boz's girlfriend when he died. Catherine proves to be a very clever and manipulative woman, and though Nick is more or less convinced that she murdered Boz, he is unable to find any evidence. Later, when Nilsen, Nick's rival in the police, is killed, Nick suspects of Catherine's involvement in it. He then starts to play a dangerous lust-filled mind game with Catherine to nail her, but as their relationship progresses, the body count rises and contradicting evidences force Nick to start questioning his own suspicions about Catherine's guilt.

  7. 7

    Body Heat (1981)

    Lawrence KasdanDP Richard H. KlineIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ned Racine is a seedy small town lawyer in Florida. During a searing heatwave he's picked up by married Matty Walker. A passionate affair commences but it isn't long before they realise the only thing standing in their way is Matty's rich husband Edmund. A plot hatches to kill him but will they pull it off?

  8. 8

    Pierrot Le Fou (Crazy Pete) (1965)

    Jean-Luc GodardDP Raoul CoutardIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ferdinand Griffon, married to a wealthy Italian wife, has recently been fired from the television station where he worked. His wife forces him to go to a party at the home of her influential father, who wants to introduce him to a potential employer. Her brother brings babysitter Marianne Renoir to take care of their children. Feeling bored at the bourgeois party, Ferdinand borrows his brother-in-law's car to head home. He meets Marianne, who was his mistress five years ago and insists on calling him Pierrot, and offers to take her home. They spend the night together and he learns that she's involved in smuggling weapons. When terrorists chase her, they decide to leave Paris and his family behind and go on the run, on a crazy journey to nowhere.

What femme fatale films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a femme fatale frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — fedora is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • fedora8.3×
  • cigarette4.4×
  • blinds4.0×
  • necktie3.8×
  • suit jacket3.8×
  • trench coat3.8×
  • tie3.0×
  • suit3.0×

How femme fatale films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate femme fatale from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 29%naturalvs 43% baseline
  • 15%widevs 20% baseline
  • 87%eye levelvs 69% baseline
  • 54%nightvs 43% baseline
  • 48%low keyvs 40% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Near Dark (1987) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,788 frames from 27 films carrying the femme fatale label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/femme-fatale

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