Shooting Straight? Queering the homme fatal in Classic Film Noir

This article seeks to reconceptualise the figure of the homme fatal as an archetype of significance in American film noir. By examining how homosexuality is portrayed as reflective of deviant masculinities in films such as The Maltese Falcon (1942), Laura (1944), and Gilda (1946), this article argues that what critic Vito Russo famously termed the ‘deadly sissy’ (70) in his landmark text, The Celluloid Closet (1981), is, in fact, a true conceptual counter to the femme fatale. Using the framework presented in Christopher Breu and Elizabeth Hatmaker’s study Noir Affect (2020), this article conceptualises the homme fatal as an agent of negative affect, characterised by its resistance to ‘positivisation’—the societal and philosophical drive toward normative affirmation (3). By reconceptualizing the homme fatal not as a dangerous man but as a figure representing deviant masculinities, this article analyses this under-researched archetype. It explores how the homme fatal, as an archetype, both reflects and refracts cultural and social anxieties, resisting hegemonic ideals of masculinity by not only embodying but also embracing its inherent negativity. © The Author(s) 2025.