The Notorious Bettie Page
HBO Films

Our rating:

Your rating:

(Click a rabbit to cast your vote.)

E-mail this review to a friend »

This year's most anticipated biopic isn't another big-budget extravaganza like Ray or Walk the Line. Shot mostly in brilliant black and white to reflect the pin-up photography of the era, the modest The Notorious Bettie Page is a kicky blend of art house feminism and grind house cheesecake. Mary Harron, directing a tragicomic screenplay she co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, tells the story of a sweet Christian girl from Tennessee who finds her calling in the early 1950s posing for amateur camera clubs. In private homes, Bettie Page models in stockings and panties for horny shutterbugs who bark orders like, "Bend forward and show us your keister!"

The ever-accommodating Page surges in popularity and becomes a star in the underground New York photo studio of Irving and Paula Klaw (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor), catering to upscale shoe fetishists and select B&D fans, strange bedfellows for such a devout Believer. Blonde, milky-skinned Gretchen Mol adopts the signature bangs and girdles of the 1950's most photographed model to strike an uncanny likeness. More importantly, Mol channels Page's kind, naive, provocative, come-hither charisma -- wholesome by today's standards -- that's made Page's images endure longer than anyone's besides Marilyn Monroe's. Back then, Page's dirty work landed her in front of a government indecency committee and eventually compelled her to retreat from the limelight. Today she's flaunted on T-shirts and lunch boxes. The Notorious Bettie Page is a fitting, loving tribute to a pre-Madonna trailblazer who always stuck to her convictions, popular or not.

The real gem of the DVD is "Presenting Bettie Page," a short, color film reel starring the real-life Bettie Page some time in the early '50s. In it, Page undresses to a see-through brassiere on a rinky-dink bedroom set, trying to look smoldering and sexy, but ultimately beaming one of her genuine sunshiny smiles, revealing that naïve Southern girl beneath the bangs and bullet bras. We can't be sure, but it looks like it came from one of her early amateur camera club sessions. Compare it to Gretchen Mol's uncanny impersonation of Page, and it validates the accuracy of her performance.

Feature-length commentary with writer-director Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol) and Mol (The Shape of Things) explains how they recreated the era in manner, clothing and even overblown film stock. They also ruminate on the era when well-meaning politicians first exposed regular folk to the seedy underbelly of American 1950s wholesomeness as a means to stop the "cancer." Instead, it led to the sexual revolution of the '60s and paved the way for pop icons like Madonna and Britney Spears. A 15-minute "making of" documentary titled "An Inside Look at the 'Pin-Up Queen of the Universe'" features interviews with Mol, Harron and fellow actor Lili Taylor, but, alas, no Bettie Page herself.

by Rob. Walton