What do you get when you bring together a duplicitous, cunning, predatory, mesmerizing, tough-sweet woman with a dim-witted, insufferable man, all of whom are engulfed by a dingy-realism and futile hell-hole? Answer: you have the preliminary workings of a classic-style film noir, and moreover, the expressionistic gears and cogwheels of Euripides" controversial play, Medea. The clever and alluring woman crosses the threshold of realities, rising from her underworld as a semi-goddess, with uncanny powers; she is the femme fatale. She evokes sadism and onslaught in an ordinary world, often to the tune of a grotesque melodrama, to shine light on passion left unruly, on the darker elements of human experience. This "witchy woman" is Medea. .
The Second World War precipitated the rise of film noir (such as "Leave Her to Heaven", "Scarlet Letter", "Touch of Evil"), which accentuated the horrors left lingering from the surreal and devastating effects it imposed on the world. Film noir is marked by skewed camera angles, spiralling cigarette smoke, disorienting visual schemes, and unbalanced compositions (such as Venetian-blinded windows casting horizontal blades of light on the male protagonist, effectuating a feel for his dismembered world). The scenes are cryptic and unsettling, in that they exhume excessively the immoral fibre of a seemingly moralistic mankind. What we are left with is a profound sense of disquietude, our morals having been run through a blender, and we must proceed to untangle the unabated mess it has left us with.
Medea does just that. It adheres to the framework of film noir to invoke languish and ambivalence. The femme fatale, Medea, is supplanted by her husband another beautiful, more innocent girl-bride, Glauce. The betrayer, Jason, is driven by foolhardy and over-ambition to sow his progeny of sons around Greece. He loves Medea not, and with her unrequited love is bred her newfound reason for being: revenge.