FFVP review - THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE

According to the real life Bettie Page there was nothing notorious about her. She just took off her clothes or dressed up in costumes and played with the props. That the costumes happened to be leather and kinky boots, and the props were chains and whips was beside the point. Page projected a naivete and innocence that men apparently found seductive. What went on in their heads was their business. She just posed and collected her paycheck. Others took the pictures and sold them. Bettie never looked back - at least until the Estes Kefauver hearings on pornography.

Director Mary Harron traces Bettie Page from her humble beginnings in Tennessee where she was used and abused by some testosterone driven males in her life. She escapes to New York in the hope of capitalizing on her good looks to become an actress. A chance encounter with a lensman who knew a good thing when he saw it opens up a whole new world that taps into her sense of fun. The result: Bettie Page became a shameless exhibitionist.

She may not have been able to act but she sure could pose! The more skin she showed the closer she got to the cheesecake photos that would lead her to the studio of Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) and his sister Paula (Lili Taylor) and the S & M pictures that would cement her reputation as everyone’s favorite under the counter Pin Up.

Gretchen Moll projects an unbridled optimism as Bettie that one does not normally associate with the world of pornography in the fifties; but it does go with the tenor of the era - post War America. Shot mostly in Black and White, color is used in “The Notorious Bettie Page” to celebrate the country’s newfound sense of wanderlust to move about the country in search of one’s destiny. This optimism co-existed with the repressive sex laws of the time that would put people in jail for the sale or purchase of Page’s photographs. It would also lead Page back to her Christian roots after the blame for a boy’s suicide is linked to her pictures on Senator Kefauver’s watch.

“The Notorious Bettie Page” is a biography-lite view of Page’s life. You never really get a sense of what drove the woman except that she was at home with her body. The movie lacked any sense of urgency or drama playing up her part in the sex industry as a lark, complete with a preening smile here and a playful sneer there. Except for a few brief moments with David Straithairn as the strait laced Kefauver you never got the idea that Page was at the center of a three ring circus started to protect the morality of the country. It is more stated than felt. Most of her ‘notorious’ scenes come across like pages out of a scrapbook instead of chapters in the life of an enigmatic woman who went from sex starlet to Christian advocate and whose image came to signify an era.

As an antidote to the playfulness of “The Notorious Bettie Page” check out these two films that deal with the exploitative and seamy side of the business of pornography

“Hardcore” (1979) - Director Paul Schrader used his Spartan Midwest upbringing as the fodder to create the father who descends into the lurid worlds of prostitution and pornography in search of his runaway daughter. George C. Scott had my vote as the father! (my take on he movie when reviewing “8MM” in 1999)

“8MM”(1999) - “8MM” starts out like a first class detective thriller complete with a P I who can keep his mouth shut, secrets of the rich and famous, and a labyrinthine journey into the cesspool of the porno trade. The use of an exotic third world tinged music score, that had echoes of the Page/Plant album, Unledded, gave the illusion that the world revealed in “8MM” would be as foreign to the audience as foreign cultures on the other side of the globe. I was mesmerized and riveted until the PI finds his quarry. The movie falls apart after movie turns into a revenge flick. But that first half! With Nicholas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Keener. Look for James Gandofini from The Sopranos in a key roll. Amy Morton (who I know little about) is heartbreaking as a mother who has lost her daughter.

A strong recommendation: Read “They Neighbor’s Wife’ - the controversial book by Gay Talese. It’s an eye opening history of Sex in America. It covers everything from the Utopian Communes of the 1800’s like Corning, N.Y to the banning of books like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, as the rise of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire, the swingin’ sixties and the popularity of over the counter sex manuals like “The Joy of Sex” in the 70s.