THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE

US, 2005, 91 minutes, Colour.
Gretchen Moll, Chris Bauer, Jared Harris, Sarah Paulson, Cara Seymour, David Strathairn, Lili Taylor, John Cullen, Matt Mc Grath, Austin Pendleton, Norman Reedus, Dallas Roberts, Victor Slezak.
Directed by Mary Harron.

This is a film where the distinction between ‘what’ is presented and ‘how’ it is presented is very important. It would be easy to dismiss this as a film about a young woman who becomes a pin-up, a nude model, a star of some underground bondage movies of the early 50s. This is, in fact, what the film is about. But, it is a very well-made film and its perspective on the notorious Bettie Page, on sex films and magazines and on the effect they have on individuals and society is a perspective to make the audience think.

Of course, someone who wants or is an addict of this kind of material will stay looking at the film’s surface and will certainly find an amount of nudity and titillation. For those who want to look beneath the surface, who appreciate character portraits, who are interested in the issues of sex, permissiveness, psychological effect of pornography and the differences between the 1950s and the present will have a lot to think about.

Bettie Page was born in 1923 to a devout Christian family in Nashville, Tennessee. There is a suggestion that she was abused by her father who eventually abandoned the family, that she experienced a brutal gang rape, that she married a violent husband. This is given as background not necessarily as cause for her decisions concerning her brief photo modelling career (1950-1957).

In fact, the point of the film is that Bettie was a very nice person, a battler but a winner. She is presented as extraordinarily ingenuous and naïve, extremely trusting of people. Invited to model for photographers and photography clubs in New York, she soon gets a reputation as an agreeable and vivacious model. This leads to nude poses and to the bondage reels which in many ways she sees as a bit of a lark to help out the tensions of highly placed and respectable men. All this time, she is quite devout, can speak about her faith in Jesus and relies on Adam and Eve being innocent and naked in Eden, only putting on clothes when they had sinned.

Gretchen Mol gives an extraordinarily nuanced performance communicating the vibrancy of Bettie’s personality.

Director Mary Herron used to make documentaries but was also a music journalist in the UK and in the US. In 1995 she directed I Shot Andy Warhol which recreated the atmosphere of Warhol’s studio and entourage, capturing the look and feel of New York in the 1960s and 1970s. She also directed the film of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, re-creating the self-centred yuppy 1980s.

With Bettie Page, she opts for black and white photography for most of the film, the look of the movies of the 50s. However, the film goes to colour for scenes in Miami and photo shoots there as well as for the religious climax when Bettie returns to Nashville. The colour is bright like the Technicolour of those days. The clips from the bondage films were designed and filmed like the 16mm reels of the time.

Many of the characters are historical personalities, from David Strathairn’s Senator Estes Kefauver who chaired a Senate Select Committee on Juveniles and Society, including the effects of pornography, to Lily Taylor’s Paula Klaw who worked with her brother making the films and who were shut down after the enquiry. Jared Harris and Sarah Paulson portray actual photographers who worked with Bettie.

The sex magazines and the bondage films look tame (for want of a better word), even absurd and simplistic, than the material that abounds now, much of which is available on the Internet.

The film reminds us that preoccupation with sex, underground material and violent sexual abuse were realities fifty years ago, not inventions of today’s permissive society. So, what are we to think about the issues? Many advocates of adult freedoms become so preoccupied with attempts to revoke those freedoms by government or pressure groups that they ignore or soft-peddle the issues of gross and crass content and the effect that this might have, especially on children and the impressionable. The debate continues. The Notorious Bettie Page is a superior film contribution to understanding of history and to the debate.