The Notorious Bettie Page starts with some of the early history of Ms. Page. She was raised in Nashville, Tennessee where she had an abusive father and an over-protective, devout Christian mother. Later she married young but divorced soon thereafter. The most striking scene is before Page became a star. She was kidnapped in Nashville by a group of men and then gang-raped. Again, it’s that childlike innocence of Page (portrayed very well by Gretchen Mol) that makes this scene so hard to watch.
After the rape, Page moves to New York to become a star. She innocently falls into pin-up modeling, then into nude modeling and eventually into the bondage modeling that she is most famous for.
Finally, after questioning whether what she is doing is immoral (again, the Christian upbringing) Page finds Jesus and dedicates her life to teaching His word.
The film is predominantly shot in black-and-white. When Page is modeling nude, on the cover of a magazine or when she visits Miami, the film switches to Technicolor to try to capture the 1950’s feel.
The film looks beautiful. The black-and-white helps suck the audience into the story. Especially since most of Page’s photos were black-and-white it really adds to the film. The Technicolor also looks really cool and really makes Mol look stunning in her nude scenes.
Here is my favorite screen shot from Page’s first photo shoot. I just loved how Mol captured that perfect smile of Bettie Page:
The film is very tasteful. This is not an exploitation film by any stretch. It was written and directed by Mary Harron who was always a fan of Page’s. Harron, like myself, just knew how ahead of her time Page was. Just a woman who loved her body and loved play acting and never thought what she was doing could possibly be hurting anyone.
Mol gives a very strong performance. It was funny to see the uber-bitch from Rounders portraying the most likeable and charismatic woman of the pin-up era.
ON THE DVD:
There is a lovely commentary from Harron and Mol. Instead of just boring the audience with inane details about the shoot (there is some of that where it is necessary), it is more of a celebration of Page’s life where they add further details to the story going on on screen.
There is a short mini-documentary on the shooting of the film. It is easily skippable.
The highlight is a striptease movie shot of Ms. Bettie Page herself. That alone makes this film worth buying. If you’ve never seen her stuff, then you just can’t understand. Watch this short film and just see her eyes and her smile. There is nothing prurient or hurtful in her. This is not perverted, just a celebration of woman.
As a bonus I’m throwing in one of my favorite Page pictures. This is an early shot of her. You can see on her face how much fun she’s having. If this interests you at all, I suggest picking up one of Bunny Yeager’s books. She shot most of Bettie’s most famous color photo shoots, including her Santa hat shoot and her Jaguar shoot.
FINAL ANALYSIS!
I loved this film. Gretchen Mol is not nearly as wonderful as the real Ms. Page, but she puts in a very good performance and Harron and Mol do a great job of capturing the essence that was Bettie Page. If you’re a Page fan, go buy this film. If not, it is definitely worth renting.
Rent this movie!!!
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