Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasures - Images from the Essay

In her essay Laura Mulvey focuses on specific films as references to her theory.  Here are just a few images from these films which I feel add weight to some aspects of her ideas.


This is Lauren Bacall in To Have or Have Not (1944),  film based on Earnest Hemingway's book of the same title.  Bacall plays opposite Humphrey Bogart.

                                            --- How much male gaze can one girl take? ----

Image taken from : http://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/T/To%20Have%20and%20Have%20Not.htm



Here is Marilyn Munro in River of No Return (1954), played with one of Mulvey's great male protagonists Robert Mitchum.

                                                               ---Eyes right boys ----


Image taken from :
http://www.doctormacro.com/movie%20star%20pages/Monroe,%20Marilyn-Annex3.htm


Both these images highlight Mulvey's comments regarding showing the  'woman as objects, the combined gaze of spectators and all the male protagonists in the film' (Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema page 4)


I would consider these fall into the Voyeuristic modes of Mulvey's theory

images from : blogs.aftrs.edu.au

images from : jonathanrosenbaum.com

These are taken from Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) in which James Stuart and Grace Kelly play and unusual role as Stuart takes on the role of a Peeping Tom spying on his neighbours whilst forced to convalesce after an accident.