''Riddles of the Sphinx'' is a 1977 British experimental drama film written, directed and produced by

Laura Mulvey Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught at Bulmershe ...

and

Peter Wollen Peter Wollen (29 June 1938 – 17 December 2019) was a film theorist and filmmaker. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's ''Signs and Meaning in the Cinema'' (1969) helped to transfo ...

and starring Dinah Stabb, Merdelle Jordine and Riannon Tise.

Plot

The film consists of seven parts. The majority of the film focuses on part four which consists of 13 scenes, which are shot in long, continuous 360-degree pans of middle-class spaces occupied and encountered by the main character, Louise. Louise is dealing with a change in her lifestyle in which she must learn to negotiate domestic life and motherhood. This is occasionally interrupted by sequences of Mulvey talking to the camera, recounting the myth of Oedipus encountering the

Sphinx A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon. In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...

Cast

*Dinah Stabb as Louise *Merdelle Jordine as Maxine *Riannon Tise as Anna *

Clive Merrison Clive Merrison (born 15 September 1945) is a British actor of film, television, stage and radio. He trained at Rose Bruford College. He is best known for his long running BBC Radio portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, having played the part in all 64 ...

as Chris *Marie Green as Acrobat *Paula Melbourne as Rope Act *Crisse Trigger as Juggler *Mary Maddox as voice Off (voice) *

as herself / Voice Off

Background

A feminist experimental film, ''Riddles of the Sphinx'' was partly inspired by Mulvey's work on

feminist film theory Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by Second Wave Feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years ...

scopophilia In psychology and psychiatry, scopophilia or scoptophilia ( grc, σκοπέω , "look to", "to examine" + , "the tendency towards") is an aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or a person. In human sexuality, the term scoptophilia des ...

and the male gaze, particularly her influential 1975 essay ''Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema''. As she wrote that classical Hollywood cinema favoured the male spectator and his desire to gaze at women, Mulvey and Wollen's film is "an attempt to merge modernist forms with a narrative exploring feminism and psychoanalytical theory". At the time, much of British experimental and avant-garde film was anti-narrative, and so the film is part of a movement that set out to explore and create a feminist language for cinema outside of traditional narrative norms. In her writing on feminist film theory, Mulvey has argued that, if the dominant cinema produces pleasure through scopophilia which favours the male gaze and festishization of woman as object, then alternative versions of cinema need to construct different forms of pleasure based on psychic relations that adopt a feminist perspective. As such, the lack of exposition, concentration on the gender politics of domestic life, and the 360-degree pans which move slowly and without focus on the women characters in ''Riddles of the Sphinx'', represent the antithesis of the cinematic pleasure seen in the dominant cinematic styles of the time. Frequently, a woman's voice is heard but not identifiable as particular character, further emphasizing "the lost discourse of woman's unconscious". Rather than using a conventional voice-over, a multitude of voices are heard, Louise and her various friends and co-workers, which according to Mulvey is intended to as "a constant return to woman, not indeed as a visual image, but as a subject of inquiry, a content which cannot be considered within the aesthetic lines laid down by traditional cinematic practice."

Production

It was produced by the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

Music

The electronic score is from

Mike Ratledge Michael Roland Ratledge (born 6 May 1943) is a British musician. A part of the Canterbury scene, he was a founding member of Soft Machine. He was the last founding member to leave the group, doing so in 1976. Biography and career Ratledge was ...

of Soft Machine.

Critical reception

The

BFI The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

comments, "visually accomplished and intellectually rigorous Riddles of the Sphinx is one of the most important avant-garde films to have emerged from Britain during the 1970s". According to

Maggie Humm Maggie Humm (born 1945) is an English feminist academic, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London. She has written on feminism and modernism, particularly the work of Virginia Woolf. Life Humm was educated at the Uni ...

in ''Feminism and Film'', "

Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser ...

's theory ( the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)) helped Mulvey clarify the systematic mechanisms by which cinematic desires might function, mechanisms which she tried to deconstruct with Brechtian techniques in her own films, particularly ''Riddles of the Sphinx''." Patricia Erens in ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism'' notes that ''Riddles of the Sphinx'' attempts to exhume a female voice that has been repressed by patriarchy, but which has nevertheless remained intact for thousands of years at some unconscious level."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Riddles of the Sphinx 1977 films 1970s avant-garde and experimental films British avant-garde and experimental films 1970s feminist films 1977 drama films 1970s English-language films 1970s British films