Act of Violencea Film Noir Whose Advertising Promises Something for All: Pretty Gals for the Male Gaze, and Domestic Drama for the Ladies

Act of Violence is an American noir film released in 1949 by MGM Studios. The film follows two main characters - Frank Enley, an American expat of WWII and a squad leader - and Joe Parkson, an expat himself and an underling of Frank; his once best friend turned enemy after an excruciating ordeal set into motion by Frank himself. The film follows an atypical noir formula, following both characters and both sides of the story at once, leaving the audience to deduce the story themselves through the scenes the characters put themselves through. However, the marketing of Act of Violence tells another story. Throughout MUCH of the marketing material, the three female characters in the movie are featured PROMINENTLY - the extent of which can be seen through the films tagline The Manhunt No Woman Could Stop. This gross misrepresentation of the movie serves one purpose - to garner more eyes on the movie. Act of Violence markets itself as a movie that features both men and women promentiently and equally, but is in reality a movie focused solely on the two prominent male characters - with the women only being used as a vehicle to further the mens needs.

In the marketing of Act of Violence it is evident that MGM wanted to promote the film as a kind of romance or violent romance/melodrama. This is a typical marketing ploy of the 1940s and 1950s, a time when film noir was a trendy staple in cinemas. The idea inherent in the promotion of the film is that here is another cinematic contribution that will serve the publics thirst for blood, sex, romance, risk, and danger. The promotional material promises scintillating cinema with its hint of gun fights, car chases, women in peril, and men faced with mortal dangers. The marketing of the film is full of promises of intoxicating sensationswith bright, bold colors splashed across the posters, and fonts designed to give the impression of chaos and alarm. Several films of the era all used similar marketing schemes: tall, curvaceous, buxom blondes or red heads lavishly portrayed on movie posters to attract the male gaze while a hint of danger or risk is implied by a man in a shadow or a man roused to anger. In MGMs posters for Act of Violence, it is no different.[footnoteRef:1] [1: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041088/mediaindex/?ref_=tt_mv_close ]

The marketing campaign highlights the stars of the film and its genre as a film noir. The names of the actors and actresses are displayed prominently on the posters, but the male actors names take top billing, with the three female supporting stars receiving lower billing on the promotional material.[footnoteRef:2] The controversial social issue highlighted is actually depicted from the womans point of view on one poster, suggesting that the film has a great deal of domestic tension and will include the womans perspective throughoutbut this is really false advertising as the bulk of the film is really from the perspective of the two male leads. MGM called it a drama of love that was linked to an Act of Violence as though the film was really a romantic noir thriller that female audiences will love as much as male audiences. Indeed, at the top of this poster is an...

…of a stylized psychological noir thriller, hokey and melodramatic at its corebut completely without sexual or domestic tension like that promised in the promotional material. Obviously, the marketing was done with the aim being to target both male and female audiences in the easiest way possible, without regard for what the story of the film really presented. The marketers simply took the typical noir tropes and amplified them in the promotional material.

In conclusion, in its marketing of the film, MGM made the women the main focus in the trailer, ensuring that the film would attract the male gaze, trying to appeal to men to watch the movie. A woman is the main focus in the poster as well: she is the bigger one out of the three characters on the poster, and the poster uses a damsel in distress clich with the way she is shown in the posterbut it also plays in to the noir/mystery vibe of the film. The caption below her in the poster actually makes it seem like she might be the main focus of the movie and that she is going to find out deep secrets about her husband, which is why it is also clear that the marketing was trying to target the female audience as well. It has to have a sense of the domestic drama as well as the violent confrontation of men in order to attract bothand the easiest way to attract the male, aside from the promise of violence, is through the male gaze. The marketers likewise believed that the easiest way to attract the female audience at the time was through a pulpy domestic drama kind of storyline that they might read…