Sexual Imagery in Film Noir: Tread Softly Stranger (1958)

Tread Softly Stranger (1958) is a top-class British noir set in a steel town in the North of England, starring Diana Dors, as a sultry femme-noir.  Two brothers are desperate for money after one has been stealing from his employer, a steel mill, to finance his infatuation with Dors.  She suggests a heist to cover the fraud and it of course goes badly wrong.  The second brother also falls for the woman, and this scene where physical violence becomes sexual attraction is deftly handled by director Gordon Parry with potent imagery that flows with the narrative as the scene shifts to the next day at the steel works…