Naughty, but nice

Gretchen Mol as "The Notorious Bettie Page," photo courtesy Picturehouse



For her time, Bettie Page was either a libidinous dream come true or the devil incarnate. Part of her allure was that she was able to project a kind of unattainable ideal for some heterosexual men, that of a wholesome beauty who could be unabashedly naughty in bed. For men, home from the war during the 1950s, she was the epitome of what many dreamed about. But, as such, she also was considered a threat to the moral fabric of a nation struggling to achieve a chaste symmetry under Eisenhower, Joe McCarthy, and Lucy and Ricky.

But who was the woman behind those familiar black bangs and, now fashionable, S&M black leather? And why, at the height of her popularity, did she drop out of public view in 1957?

Director Mary Harron doesn’t seem as interested in looking beneath the surface of the real Bettie Page as she does her own aesthetic interpretation of Bettie’s superficial appeal. We don’t get to know who the real Bettie was, but we certainly get to see a lot of her. Harron takes us from Bettie’s strict upbringing in Nashville, Tenn. to the evolution of an independent, free spirit who became increasingly noticed by photographers, amateur and professional, who imagined her in all sorts of provocative poses with that sweet and seemingly innocent smile. For her straight-forward life and photo sessions, we see her in black-and-white; for times when she is happiest and when the potential for greatness is just a breath away, we see her in grainy Kodacolor, a visual choice that Harron seems intent as a symbolic underscore, but which comes off as film-school ham-handedness.

As Bettie, actress Gretchen Mol seems perfectly cast. She easily captures the sense that God-fearing, healthy self-esteemed Bettie was perfectly aware of everything she did, even the “Bettie Page in Bondage” photos that eventually got her into hot water with Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. It was Kefauver who opened hearings in 1955 to investigate the impact of pornographic material on the nation’s youth. To Harron’s vision of Bettie, though, the photos were simply fun to do, a little silly dress-up with goofy costumes that “special customers,” some very respectible, paid good money to see.

Although we see that her work with Movie Star News, a storefront run by Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) and his half-sister Paula (Lili Taylor), leads to more and more risqué imagery, Harron shows little of the exploitive marketplace for the kind of material that caught the attention of Kefauver’s smut hunters. Images do not magically go from model to photographer to magazine without the distraction of intent somewhere along the path — and, consequently, it bears noting that Harron falls into the same ilk, despite being tarted up with arty production values.

Bettie led an interesting, mulilayered life, which included Stanislavski-method acting lessons and a personal commitment to Christian values, in vivid contrast to the pin-up images with which her fans were most familiar. But Harron only depicts that life up to a point, preferring to take the commonly held notion that Page left celebrity to pursue a path to Jesus. In reality, Bettie’s world crumbled amid schitzophrenia, violent tendencies, jail, and mental institutions. Maybe that was just too nasty for Harron to show.

“The Notorious Bettie Page” is rated R for nudity, sexual content and some language.

This article was originally published June 8, 2006 in Rick Romancito's Cinemafile column in Tempo, the arts and entertainment magazine of The Taos News