THE IMAGES OF DESIRE IN THE 1960S, AND EARLY 1970S TURKISH LOVE FILMS: THE EXAMPLE OF ？MER LüTF？ AKAD

This study critically analyzes the images of desire in the 1960s, and early 1970s Turkish cinema, focusing upon ？mer Lütfi Akad’s films. Arriving from Gilles Deleuze’s idea that film-makers think with images, and thus, films include certain ideas of their directors, it is therefore investigated how the films analyzed here present the ideas about desire as love, and desire in love. Using an intertextual reading method, the study exhibits the main and dominant themes, and images about desire in these films. With this way, it is being tried to show with which discourses and ideas on desire these images and themes have similarities. In this sense, the study lays barely that the images of desire as lacking, and desire as directed to the Good and Beautiful life dominate in these films. Around these images that are purified from bad and harmful passions, instincts, and appetites; desire is fictionalized as a force to satisfy the needs and lacks of the lovers. Therefore, the study claims that the films exclude, and control the other forms and expressions of desire in the narrative structure through a cinematic operation