Thinking in Images

Addresses the current crisis in film theory by offering a new methodology for interrelating theory and film texts. Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Michele Le Doeuff, the author argues that philosophy is reliant on socio-cultural images, such as the figures of the veiled woman, the femme fatale, and the seductress.

The author traces the key role played by such images of woman in the theorisations of beauty, art, and truth offered by Nietzsche and his successors: Derrida, Kofman, and Baudrillard. Importantly, the recognition that images are crucial to theorising means that film images have the capacity to challenge and change previous theoretical models.

This is demonstrated by a case study of three films from the Dietrich/Sternberg cycle: The Scarlet Empress, The Devil is a Woman, and Shanghai Express. The detailed readings focus on the ways in which Dietrich's glamorous characters challenge the theorisation of woman as a beautiful object, thus offering new ways of conceptualising woman's role as the icon of beauty, art, and truth.