As a lover of film noir I was struck by the femdom and risqué themes in three now famous movies: The Blue Angel 1930, Gilda 1946 & Sunset Boulevard 1950 mainly that all of them centre around a cuckolding diva. Women who flirt or take lovers that they flaunt in front of their husbands. (For a full explanation of cuckolding see my blog Cuckolding the Ultimate Sexual Humiliation here.)
Gilda 1946 The plot makes little sense but importantly it revolves around Gilda trying to humiliate Johnny her husband by flirting with other men in front of him and even at one point starting a striptease in a room full of men. Here she is using a type of flirty cuckolding to humiliate him and punish him with his own jealousy. (This is another interesting clip along the same lines from the movie http://youtu.be/tT4j62qfKVs )
Here is Rita Hayworth in the famous scene from the movie, proving her place as one of the most beautiful and alluring women in the world – now that’s the art of tease (and most definitely an inspiration for Jessica Rabbit.)
Stunning, Enigmatic, Photogenic – Marlene Dietrich
The Blue Angel 1930 is the most cruel, a school teacher falls for cabaret girl Lola-Lola and leaves everything behind to be with her. She spends all his money and now penniless he ends up having to work as a ‘clown’ in the circus while she moves onto a love affair with the ‘strongman’ (that’s one hell of a cuckolding metaphor). After watching them together he commits suicide. This was the movie that made Marlene Dietrich famous and where she notably sings ‘Falling in Love Again’ which has the words…
Men cluster to me like moths around a flame
And if their wings burn, I know I’m not to blame
It was banned in the UK by the censors who described it as an ‘exhibition of lustful degeneracy.’ Slideshow of Marlene Dietrich while she sings the song here: https://youtu.be/hK1lUswV6Uk
Sunset Boulevard 1950 I love this movie, it’s a work of genius with the cuckolding Diva of all Divas, Norma Desmond – “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) a former huge star of the silent screen, takes in a younger man (to replace her recently dead, pet monkey) seducing him with her money and then sexually. He’s soon totally under the spell of this rich, domineering prima donna. We find out later in the movie that her butler, who has facilitated much of this was once her husband but is so dedicated to her now lives as her servant (cuckolded slave). Norma Desmond puts the fatal into femme as she most certainly doesn’t take kindly to the idea of her young beau leaving her.
The movie famously ends with her line – “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” As she disappears into the celluloid… forever.
Interesting post. I love classic movies. Of these three you mention I only have ‘Gilda’: the story is embarrassingly ridiculous, but just the scenes with Rita Hayworth make it valueable. I still have to see the other two, their scripts sound far more interesting.
I’d highly recommend Sunset Blvd – it a classic of Film Noir genre, fabulous shots that compare with Citizen Kane and so dark in it’s themes.
Wow, any comparison with ‘Citizen Kane’ is challenging for me 🙂 Orson Welles’ direction was fantastic and I think many of his techniques in that movie would work very well in FemDom videos. I think I’ll go for both movies: Marlene Dietrich is also a good reason to buy any movie (those legs!).
Great post – I have always thought cuckolding was a barely suppressed theme in so many great films and books. In particular, almost all of the films of Joseph von Sternberg (who directed The Blue Angel) have what to my mind seems a fairly blatant cuckold theme, all featuring Marlene Dietrich. My favourite is ‘Morocco’ which has a great scene in which the Dietrich character’s husband (who is, incidentally, a dead-ringer for Von Sternberg himself) insists on his fellow military officers being present to hear his wife tell him she has fallen for a handsome soldier (played by Gary Cooper) … he invites his own public humiliation.
Perhaps the three greatest novels of the last two centuries – Madame Bovary, Anna Karenin, and Ulysses – also have cuckolding as a central theme.
Thank you I will have to take a look at Morocco, I have also been reminded of Bitter Moon – Roman Polanski’s fairly recent offering and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
I would also mention ‘Malice’: a thriller with a very good cast (Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman, Bill Pullman) and with a script written by one of the best screenplay writers nowadays: Aaron Sorkin. Oh, and an EXCELLENT and memorable cameo by the magnificent Anne Bancroft. Certainly a movie where women pull the strings.
I’m ording it from Amazon right now 🙂
I hope you like it, Mistress Sidonia. I would be happy to know what you think of it. I hope you won’t punish me if you don’t find it as good as I do… 😉
Legend has it that Erich von Stroheim wanted to do a scene in Sunset Blvd. where he washed Gloria Swanson’s panties, but director Billy Wilder essentially told “Von” to calm down, that it would never get past the censors.
Bitter Moon is a movie that personally left me with a very bitter aftertaste…depressing. It struck me as more about the decline of a relationship than about BDSM.
On the other hand, the 1999 Japanese film Moonlight Whispers has one of the greatest, most intense, but cleverly portrayed cuckolding scenes ever. This is what I wrote about it on my own blog, with the links:
https://irvoneil.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/femdom-thrills-in-mainstream-movies/
Moonlight Whispers might be my favorite mainstream femdom film. If you haven’t seen it, Mistress Sidonia, I hope you do sometime, and enjoy!
I rather like Bitter Moon and watched it again only recently (loved Peter Coyote’s performance and have always had an affinity with Polanski’s work) it does chart a relationship that has does everything and has nowhere to go. I will have to check out Moonlight Whispers 🙂
I will never forget the scene in Blue Angel when the ex professor dressed as a clown sees Marlene with her new lover . He is totally broken and is forced on stage to act the fool and screams like a demented chicken.
I don’t see that being done so raw and powerful in modern cinema. The other two films are great as well. Thanks for your blog Mistress.