Sandy Camargo comments: Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that it isn't > only the act of looking but how the narrative codes that act. Since I don't > know SARATOGA TRUNK, I don't know if Bergman's gaze is ratified or punished > by the narrative as a whole. I realise that SARATOGA TRUNK is now a little known film, despite its popularity at the time (lost, like many of the most popular films of the period, as a consequence of film studies concentration on films noirs as the emblematic films of the period). The reason that it is such a good antidote to *Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema* is precisely because Bergman's objectifying gaze and her predatory sexuality are not *punished* by the narrative. It would probably be going too far to say they were ratified although the narrative does hold out the possibility that she will achieve everything she wants until the very end of the film and her ultimate submission to Cooper's authority at the film's end is portrayed as the act of a free agent who forgoes ambition for love. There are undoubtedly those who would argue that her submission to Cooper is a *punishment* for her transgressive behaviour but I don't see anything in the film which authorises such a reading, and to interpret the film in this way, I feel, is to impose a reading which exceeds the text because one is approaching it from a theoretical perspective which has certain expectations, i.e. that women characters in films who objectify men must be *punished*. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is the way it avoids either ratifying or *punishing* but leaves things nicely ambiguous, not only in relation to gender but in the way it handles race and class too. Ambiguity, however, is rather difficult to theorise in the grand, generalising terms employed in *Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema*, which is another reason the film is so useful for challenging some of Mulvey's arguments. Mike Chopra-Gant Goldsmiths College University of London [log in to unmask] ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite