ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together two rather different concepts that at first sight seem to have significance in different spheres: the British state’s political relationship with Europe in the post-war period and British cinema’s attempts to deal with representations of sexuality in the 1950s. In the films of the period, however, these two problematics are brought together, and we can understand the emergence of one of the most familiar clichés of fifties British cinema – the beautiful, free and sexy foreign woman – if we consider it in terms not only of sexuality but also of post-war politics. In this chapter, I suggest that, in the early part of the period, the European woman is used as a key figure to express British ambivalence about Europe, that this political ambivalence finds expression and a limited form of resolution through an emphasis on sexuality, and that this complex sexual aura continues to be a key featureof the representation of such women even when its political resonanceshave fallen away.
