The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Gordon’s willingness to explore dangerous territory puts her miles ahead of most filmmakers.”

John Powers, LA Weekly

In Bette Gordon’s landmark feminist noir, Christine (Sandy McLeod), a sexually repressed aspiring writer, happens upon a front-of-house ticketing gig at Variety Photoplays, a historic porn theatre in New York City. Loitering around the lobby and peering into the cinema at the pornographic action, Christine begins to tap into her unrealized desires, locating pleasure in the act of watching men watch. After she stalks an elusive patron and uncovers a crime syndicate, the film’s sexual intrigue becomes bound up with the transgressive and scopophilic—a kind of pronounced eroticism that perverts the male gaze and encourages a radical reimagining of sexuality and conquest. Drawing inspiration from the psychoanalytic writings of Laura Mulvey and Sophie Calle, and featuring appearances from cultural superstars Nan Goldin and Cookie Mueller, Variety toys with how women encounter voyeurism and the ways they wrangle the unrelenting act of looking to their benefit.

“A daring departure into the dark, irrational, and obsessional world of personal female fantasy.”

Linda Gross, Los Angeles Times

“Explores in deft and occasionally jarring detail the abysses of female sexual desire, which are often ignored for their unpalatability to the male gaze … Variety offers a sage and prescient commentary on the stunted psychosexual landscape of heteronormative masculinity.”

Rebecca Liu, Another Gaze