PLOT: In the 1950s, Tennessee cutie Bettie Page was a popular pinup girl, known for her fetish poses. What she undertook in order to pay the bills made her the target of a U.S. senate investigation into juvenile delinquency and pornography; the furor has managed to keep her name alive for 50 years.
The Notorious Bettie Page covers an important chapter in American culture through the story of a famed pinup model.
Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol, wonderful here) was a pretty girl from Tennessee who wandered into the spotlight almost by accident.
Page left home to live in New York in the 1950s and wound up posing in her bathing suit for camera clubs and men's magazines. Eventually, according to the movie, she agreed to be in fetish photos and bondage films, most of which look utterly tame and amateurish today.
She regarded the film and photo work as little more than well-paid, dressup fun; however, Page wound up being investigated during senator Estes Kefauver's (David Strathairn) investigation into pornography and juvenile delinquency. Always religious, Bettie thereafter devoted her life to Christian preaching.
According to The Notorious Bettie Page, Page was sexually assaulted in adolescence, but filmmaker Mary Harron doesn't put any cause-and-effect emphasis on such incidents. It's more like the 1950s are being presented, but this time, not through the prism of nostalgia. Bettie's world, and those pinup pictures, seem to represent a cultural turning point, and the double obsessions with religion and sex are certainly all-American pursuits.
Bettie Page's story is interesting; Harron's storytelling is wonderful. The filmmaker re-creates the times in black and white, but also uses "technicolour" moments for a few Sirk-ish scenes, and throughout, The Notorious Bettie Page is an absolute treat to look at. (Just to see the archival footage of Times Square woven into the film is gobsmacking.)
In addition to Gretchen Mol, The Notorious Bettie Page stars Lili Taylor and Jared Harris, and involves glimpses of such actors as Norman Reedus, who plays Bettie's first husband. The look of the film is so engaging (and no, not just the nudity, but thanks for asking) that it was over before we realized we hadn't learned enough about Bettie Page herself.
BOTTOM LINE: There's something enchanted about the way this film presents Page, as if her innocence were a protective bubble that carried her through her life. It's a terrific movie.
(This film is rated PG)
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