ABSTRACT
Throughout film history, studios and fan magazines have referred to actresses considered ideally beautiful as ‘goddesses of love’. The Venus de Milo, the most famous and popular ancient image of Aphrodite, has thus become a kind of supermodel to which actresses had to measure up, literally and figuratively. On the screen itself, statues of Aphrodite appear most frequently as decoration that sends certain messages to viewers about beauty, its culture, and even Western culture at large. The most noteworthy incarnation of the goddess is Ava Gardner’s Anatolian Venus in One Touch of Venus. This, and other films such as Venus vor Gericht (‘Venus in Court’, 1941), are the main focus of this chapter.
