365 Films A Year!

The Notorious Bettie Page tells the story of the rise to fame of the well-loved pinup girl. It follows her as she leaves her home and hooks up with a successful publisher of “educational” and “specialty” photographs, eventually becoming one of the most famous “non-famous” people in the country. (Bettie may not have gotten any mentions in Variety, but a lot of people knew who she was.)

Gretchen Mol as Bettie certainly captures a sense of her mystique. With that distinctive hairstyle and Bettie’s signature outfits, she is a good physical match, if not a dead ringer. Having seen several of Bettie’s short films, I also felt that she moved in the right way, conveying a sense of how Bettie really carried herself. Disjointed though the film may be, in Mol we at least get a solid look at who Bettie was, even if we can’t really gleam how she got there. Unfortunately, Bettie is the only character that gets any kind of serious attention. Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer), Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson) and the many other models, photographers and various authority figures we meet along the way are all on display, but the film never shows them more than superficially. They are there to do their bit, but we never even begin to learn who they are.

Another problem is that the film never delivers on its promise of notoriety. I suppose this could have been intentional, showing how it was all much ado about nothing, but it means the film lacks punch. The scene that best symbolizes this problem is when Bettie is called to testify and we get a huge build-up, only to have her told she can go and doesn’t have to talk. This film is like that, it shows us what happened, makes a great deal of noise about how significant it all is, but then never really lets us feel it. It may have been better if they had backed off from focusion on the “notorious” and more on Bettie Page.

From documentaries I’ve seen and books and articles I’ve read, there’s certainly enough to Bettie’s life to warrant a film. But in the end, The Notorious Bettie Page isn’t it. What director Mary Harron and her co-writer Guinevere Turner have produced is a hazy image of Bettie. While we see the forms, they never come into proper focus. And, believe me, a blurry picture of Bettie Page is a darn shame to behold.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under 2005, Based on Book, Based on Real Events, Biopic, Drama, Mature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.