The Notorious Bettie Page
You'd think a movie about the Pin-Up Queen of Universe would be interesting. You'd be wrong. Young Bettie leaves her abusive husband in the late 1940s, heads for the bright lights of New York, starts modeling for camera clubs in swimsuits, lingerie and sometimes nothing at all, and eventually goes to work for "Pin-Up King" Irving Klaw, who specializes in bondage and other fetish photography and films (stuff that would barely raise an eyebrow today). Bettie also does a series of nude pinups for photographer Bunny Yeager (including a famous shot that makes its way into a new magazine called Playboy). While she doesn't come across as a particularly deep thinker, Bettie still has a nagging emptiness inside her which she eventually fills by becoming a born-again Christian and disappearing off the face of the Earth. And that's pretty much it. It's a great looking film—director Mary Harron bounces between color and black and white, giving 1950s New York an almost documentary feel to it. Gretchen Mol, who never lived up to the "It-Girl" status she was saddled with after her breakout role in Rounders back in 1998, does a fine job and, frankly, looks far better than the real Bettie Page ever did. Speaking of the real Bettie, she resurfaced several years ago and considers this film a mostly fictionalized version of her life. Was the real version even more boring?
- February 11, 2007
DVD Extras
A featurette on making the film and recreating the 1950s; commentary by Mol, Harron and the screenwriter, which would have required re-watching this snooze-fest; and several minutes of silent film footage of the real Bettie Page stripping for the camera.