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The Notorious Bettie Page
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Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) didn’t know much while growing up in her home town of Nashville, Tennessee, except that she was good to look at with or without clothes on. This southern bell took the country by storm in an era of moral repression and the rise of photographic pornography, posing in gothic corsets, fishnet stockings and eccentric lace up boots. She was the face of the new ‘art form’ called bondage and became a sex icon in 1950’s America. The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) spans her entire accidental career in New York City and the moral backlash she received from the public and government for her outrageous photographs.
Since Page’s career consisted of photographs and films, the movie was filmed in both black and white and color to depict the type of format being used in the scene to take her pictures. It gives an interesting visual, but makes it confusing at the same time, retracting you from what is happening in the movie. Cinematographer W. Moff Hupfel III used old color stock film to recreate the cheerfully vivid hues of techicolor that was commonly used in 1950s films. Like most indie films, the acting is good but the dialogue is stiff. The character of Bettie Page is difficult to understand in the film. She is a victim of so many bad circumstances, yet willfully chooses a career that exploits and demoralizes her and almost prides herself in her work. The other odd thing about her is that she seems to hate sex, but dates men and poses nude for photographs. Though you see actress … who plays Bettie Page fully nude, you do not ever see her positively engage with her boyfriends or have sex with them.
It is a struggle to get through this film. Bettie Page herself might be interesting, but the way in which they choose to tell her story is not. The film was sent to a few film festivals and limited releases in American theaters before its debut to DVD in 2006. As far as money goes, this bio only brought enough in to break even.
Mary Harron did more than her fair share of work on this film. She was a co-writer and co-producer with Guinevere Turner as well as the director. She is seen a brief cameo holding a camera and asking Bettie to smile for the ‘boys’. This was Harron’s third time directing a full length feature. Her background has stemmed primarily in television as a ‘guest’ director. The co-writer of this film, Turner, was also a guest speaker on the cable series “Indie Sex” concerning Bettie Page’s career and influence.
As far as a bio, it covers the basics of what Bettie Page did and what she was quoted saying. They even recreated scenes and photographs from the real pinup’s portfolio. But they really didn’t delve into the soul of the real woman. The real Bettie Page was a Christian who struggled in life. She was repeatedly raped by her father, then a victim of a gang rape when she left home as an adult. She was constantly torn between the ways of the world that craved sex and exalted her for giving it to them and the way of God that kept insisting that she was meant for more. In the end, she abandoned the pornography business and became a dedicated street preacher. In this biography, the moral battles that Page faced are in the background and are less glorified than her raunchy pictures.
If you want to learn more about the “Pin-up Queen of the Universe” it would be better to read a book than to watch The Notorious Bettie Page. This film doesn't cut it.
To learn more about the real Notorious Bettie Page, click here!
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