Is this the most sub­ver­sive femme fatale in movie history?

Released in 1945, Pink String and Seal­ing Wax is land­locked between icon­ic Amer­i­can noirs Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, Lau­ra and The Big Sleep. Pro­duced by Eal­ing Stu­dios and direct­ed by Robert Hamer (who went on to make Kind Heart and Coro­nets), the film failed to have quite the same cul­tur­al impact as the studio’s most endur­ing clas­sics. Yet it con­tains per­haps the most com­plex and inter­est­ing femme fatale in film his­to­ry: Goo­gie With­ers’ Pearl Bond.

After ini­tial­ly appear­ing as a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in a seedy sub­plot about a mar­ried woman’s infat­u­a­tion with anoth­er man, it soon emerges that Bond is the film’s trag­ic vil­lain. A strong-willed woman with mur­der­ous inten­tions, she is ruth­less in her deter­mi­na­tion to plot her pub­li­can husband’s death fol­low­ing an abu­sive rela­tion­ship. How­ev­er, despite the cun­ning she dis­plays in stag­ing a mur­der as death by nat­ur­al caus­es, Bond is vul­ner­a­ble to the manip­u­lat­ing man she kills to be with. Above all, With­ers’ anti-hero­ine is a des­per­ate and lust­ful woman who sub­verts the tra­di­tion­al image of the femme fatale while adher­ing to the arche­typ­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of the dark, seduc­tive beauty.

With­ers worked across stage and screen dur­ing the ear­ly part of her career, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the likes of Alfred Hitch­cock (The Lady Van­ish­es) and Michael Pow­ell (The Girl in the Crowd, The Love Test, One of Our Air­craft is Miss­ing). Her first film with Pow­ell was an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty that saw her excel in a lead role. Pri­or to Pink String and Seal­ing Wax, With­ers starred in Eal­ing hor­ror anthol­o­gy Dead of Night, again for Hamer, before team­ing up with the direc­tor on 1947’s It Always Rains on Sun­days. On stage she appeared in plays by Anton Chekov and Oscar Wilde, work­ing in Britain, Aus­tralia and on Amer­i­can Broad­way. And in 1950 she starred along­side Gene Tier­ney, anoth­er bril­liant lead­ing lady from Hollywood’s Gold­en Age, in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City. It marked the union of two actress­es play­ing dif­fer­ent yet equal­ly mem­o­rable femme fatales, with With­ers con­tin­u­ing to show a pen­chant for play­ing dark­er characters.

What With­ers brought to Pearl Bond was a nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to switch between light and dark, and she is arguably at her most com­pelling in the film’s many moments of qui­et angst. Femme fatales are tra­di­tion­al­ly a source of mys­tique yet Bond’s ter­ri­ble crime plays out in plain sight, link­ing her to Bar­bara Stanwyck’s devi­ous Phyl­lis Diet­rich­son from Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, who con­spires open­ly with insur­ance sales­man Wal­ter Neff (Fred Mac­Mur­ray) to mur­der her hus­band. But while the open­ness of Bond’s crime and attempt­ed black­mail cre­ates a cer­tain con­nec­tion with her con­tem­po­raries, it also sets her apart.

Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty and The Lady From Shang­hai both end with the demise of Stan­wyck and Rita Hayworth’s char­ac­ters as they make one last cal­cu­lat­ing bid to sur­vive with the sound of gun­fire ring­ing around them. Lau­ra con­cludes with a dec­la­ra­tion of love from a dying man. By con­trast, the most reveal­ing aspect of With­ers’ femme fatale is her final act of sur­ren­der, as she throws her­self to her death from the prom­e­nade. Pearl Bond ulti­mate­ly lacks the calm ratio­nal­i­ty of her coun­ter­parts. She is by turns dan­ger­ous and vul­ner­a­ble, a vic­tim of domes­tic abuse who tries and strug­gles to manip­u­late those around her – a tru­ly unique and under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed femme fatale.

Pink String and Seal­ing Wax is out now on DVD cour­tesy of StudioCanal.