ABSTRACT
Women have been an integral part of Turkish cinema since its beginnings. About half of the first fiction films made in Ottoman Turkey were about women, although women’s representation in these films is far from favourable, the most common image being the seductress with loose morals and an unappeasable sexual appetite. In Sedat Simavi’s Pençe (The Clutch, 1917), one protagonist is a nymphomaniac and the other an adulteress. In Ahmet Fehim’s Mürebbiye (The Governess, 1919), an oversexed French woman seduces all the males in a rich household.1 In Muhsin Ertu rul’s stanbul’da Bir Facia’i A k (A Love Tragedy in Istanbul, 1922), a courtesan destroys urban petit bourgeois males with her sexual appeal. In his ehvet Kurbanı (The Victim of Lust, 1939), the sensual Cahide Sonku is a mysterious temptress.
