Movies
The Notorious Bettie Page
Unworthy biopic on "the pin-up queen of the universe," a brief reign in the mid-Fifties, until a congressional hearing on pornography sent her down the path of repentance, into the sheltering arms of Jesus. Gretchen Mol is game enough in the posing sessions, and has her own kind of vulnerability in the role of the naïve and unreflective (so portrayed, anyway) Southern-bred sex object. Yet, besides missing something in the hips, replacing the dangerous curves with the gentlest of slopes, she cannot hope to match the charisma, the mystique, the mystery, of her assigned character. (It's no problem to match the raven hair and bangs.) She finds herself in much the same predicament as past impersonators of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley -- and no, it is no overstatement to place Bettie Page, sometimes Betty Page, in that company. (Icons of the Fifties.) This mischievous, mute phantom of salacious still photos and silent fetish films is a fantasy figure par excellence; and filmmaker Mary Harron's stiff, flat, plodding rehearsal of some of the known facts of her life -- a molesting father, a battering husband, the private camera clubs of New York City, the under-the-counter bondage sideline of the podgy Irving Klaw, the cheerful cheesecake of Bunny Yeager, the reversion to That Old-Time Religion -- adds nothing to, even subtracts something from, the enigmatic evidence in her portfolio. It almost makes her seem (what would have been thought impossible) quite dull. Even the black-and-white photography, or rather the gray-and-grayer photography, seems dull. (Backed up by a "dirty" saxophone, it might not immediately seem so in the opening prowl of a Times Square adult bookstore, past magazine titles like Wink, Titter, and Escapade.) As a diligent evocation of an era, it, too, is unworthy. The fitful switches into color -- a buoyant, brilliant, brighter-than-life color that pays knowledgeable homage to 1950s postcards and to Technicolor Hollywood -- are anything but dull. One of the things they are, however, is utterly arbitrary. Chris Bauer, Lili Taylor, Jared Harris, Cara Seymour, David Strathairn. 2006.
— Duncan Shepherd
Reader Rating:
- MPAA Rating: R
A show well worth peeping. Starring the woman who played lady cop Annie in the U.S. version of the (woefully underrated) Life on Mars TV show, the Notorious Bettie Page is a pretty good movie. It goes into surprising depth RE the increasingly federalized attempts to legislate all aspects of the sex biz out of existence, as well as covering a lot of Miss Page's (very interesting) personal biographical history. Star Gretchen Mol (who seems to specialize in period pieces - the '70s in Life on Mars, and now the '50s) does well with projecting both innocence and naughtiness. I've met part-time pornographer Bunny Yeager and can vouch that the movie's portrayal is fairly accurate, if a bit superficial - much more could have been done with the motivations behind choosing such an "outlaw" endeavor, in an social-status era when jail wasn't anywhere near the worst thing that could result.
All in all, tho, a well-done flick --
By jayallen 1:16 p.m., Jan 21, 2010 > Report it
Gretchen Mol is a Goddess. ***** performance.
By Rocket_J_Squirrel 9:11 p.m., Mar 6, 2010 > Report it