Riddles of the Sphinx
A classic of feminist avant-garde cinema, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) follows the life of Louise (Dinah Stabb), a white middle-class woman living in London in the 1970s, as she confronts the complex politics of motherhood, domestic labour and work. With a kaleidoscopic array of cinematic techniques and poetic devices, the film charts Louise's process as she questions her place within white patriarchal culture and finds her voice within the burgeoning Women's Liberation Movement.

Reading Riddles as an essay film, Kimberly Lamm explores how it utilises voice, sound and writing to challenge Hollywood's dominant images of women and to portray maternal care as a legitimate form of work, rich in aesthetic pleasures and feminist possibilities. She examines the voice of the Sphinx, and, connecting it to feminism's engagement with psychoanalysis, argues that Mulvey and Wollen's film works-through long histories of patriarchal viewing practices and creates conditions in which the full range of women's voices can be listened to, heard and valued. Lamm explores how Riddles, the second collaboration between Mulvey and Wollen, drew inspiration from Wollen's influential work on 'counter-cinema' and Mulvey's foundational writing on 'the male gaze'.

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Riddles of the Sphinx
A classic of feminist avant-garde cinema, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) follows the life of Louise (Dinah Stabb), a white middle-class woman living in London in the 1970s, as she confronts the complex politics of motherhood, domestic labour and work. With a kaleidoscopic array of cinematic techniques and poetic devices, the film charts Louise's process as she questions her place within white patriarchal culture and finds her voice within the burgeoning Women's Liberation Movement.

Reading Riddles as an essay film, Kimberly Lamm explores how it utilises voice, sound and writing to challenge Hollywood's dominant images of women and to portray maternal care as a legitimate form of work, rich in aesthetic pleasures and feminist possibilities. She examines the voice of the Sphinx, and, connecting it to feminism's engagement with psychoanalysis, argues that Mulvey and Wollen's film works-through long histories of patriarchal viewing practices and creates conditions in which the full range of women's voices can be listened to, heard and valued. Lamm explores how Riddles, the second collaboration between Mulvey and Wollen, drew inspiration from Wollen's influential work on 'counter-cinema' and Mulvey's foundational writing on 'the male gaze'.

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Riddles of the Sphinx

Riddles of the Sphinx

by Kimberly Lamm
Riddles of the Sphinx

Riddles of the Sphinx

by Kimberly Lamm

Paperback

$17.95 
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Overview

A classic of feminist avant-garde cinema, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) follows the life of Louise (Dinah Stabb), a white middle-class woman living in London in the 1970s, as she confronts the complex politics of motherhood, domestic labour and work. With a kaleidoscopic array of cinematic techniques and poetic devices, the film charts Louise's process as she questions her place within white patriarchal culture and finds her voice within the burgeoning Women's Liberation Movement.

Reading Riddles as an essay film, Kimberly Lamm explores how it utilises voice, sound and writing to challenge Hollywood's dominant images of women and to portray maternal care as a legitimate form of work, rich in aesthetic pleasures and feminist possibilities. She examines the voice of the Sphinx, and, connecting it to feminism's engagement with psychoanalysis, argues that Mulvey and Wollen's film works-through long histories of patriarchal viewing practices and creates conditions in which the full range of women's voices can be listened to, heard and valued. Lamm explores how Riddles, the second collaboration between Mulvey and Wollen, drew inspiration from Wollen's influential work on 'counter-cinema' and Mulvey's foundational writing on 'the male gaze'.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781839026850
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 06/12/2025
Series: BFI Film Classics
Pages: 104
Product dimensions: 1.11(w) x 1.11(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kimberly Lamm is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke University, USA. She is author of Addressing the Other Woman: Textual Correspondences in Feminist Art and Writing (2018).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: A New Language of Desire
1. The Directors' Address
2. Writing the Voice of the Sphinx
3. The Sounds of the Longest Revolution
4. Feminism's Collective Voice
5. Listening for Fantasies
Conclusion: Continued by You
Notes
Credits
Bibliography

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