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Customer Reviews of The Notorious Bettie Page

That Gretchen Mol...
It's still relatively early in the year, and yet, actresses are giving superb, Oscar-worthy performances. No exception here. "Bettie Page" is a strong film, about a cult pin-up icon that many are not familiar with. This film could have stumbled into many cliches about the young, beautiful girl next door, who has a bad family life, gets raped, et. al., but the filmmakers, mainly director Mary Harron, shy away from those. The interesting thing about this film is that, unlike many biographies, this film sets character-to-character dynamics aside. This is a film about Bettie, and Bettie alone. There is a brief subplot about the government's case against Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer), but it is never resolved. The filmmakers want us to know that this is about Bettie, her life, and her struggles, and nothing else. Beautiful Bettie Page (Mol) thought her life would be ordinary. She marries at an early age, only to leave her abusive husband after a short time. As an adolescent, she was sexually abused by her father, and it wouldn't be the last instance. Later in the film, after leaving her husband, she is picked up by a guy under the ruse of him not having a date to the dance. They soon pick up more guys, take her to the woods, and rape her. Bettie decides to run from it all, and moves to New York to pursue acting. It doesn't take long for her to get into modeling, but it's a bit different than the common perception of photography. She begins to do "specialty" photography, mainly bondage, for "special" clients. Working for Irving and Paula Klaw (Bauer and Lili Taylor), she begins to set her roots in the pinup world. She also does nude photos on the side. She also begins to develop a bit of a relationship with another model, Maxie (Cara Seymour, who I swore was Jennifer Jason Leigh, with a Miranda Richardson accent) and they do a few bondage films together. Bettie meets other men, but always seems at a distance with them. The same is said for her acting career. She takes acting classes, but there is a distance placed between her and the stage. No, pin-up modeling is what Bettie was made to do. I cannot really give much more plot synopsis. Not much really happens. What the film lacks in plot, it gains in Gretchen Mol's great performance. "Bettie Page", unlike other biopics ("Ray", "Walk the Line", etc.) leaves more room to view the performances, rather than getting a whole lot of plot out in an hour and a half. Mol's performance carries this film, and I really enjoyed seeing both the performance and the film.

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"Doctors write books about this sort of thing. It's abnormal."
As a Bettie Page fan, I was both eager and apprehensive to see the film "The Notorious Bettie Page." My main concern was that the actress chosen to play Bettie Page wouldn't be able to do the part justice. I was wrong on that score--Gretchen Mol makes a splendid Bettie Page. After watching the film, I studied some Bettie Page photos (on my wall) and concluded that Mol's performance was close enough to be almost perfect. Unfortunately, however, Gretchen Mol's glowing performance cannot salvage the script from mediocrity. <
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>The film begins with scenes of Bettie's troubled childhood--hinting at early childhood abuse, and briefly touches on her youthful marriage. Bettie wanted to be an actress, but like many girls, she sidestepped into modeling. In Bettie's case, however, nude modeling proved to be her forte. She moved on to the remarkable Klaw siblings--Irving (Chris Bauer) and Paula (Lili Taylor) and their mail-order photography business. It was with the Klaws that Bettie made those famous bondage films. Bette's career came to a crashing halt when the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency crushed Klaw's lucrative mail-order business, and Klaw closed shop due to constant harassment. <
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>The film's treatment of the adult naughty photography business of the 50s is well done. For the most part the film is in black and white but switches to colour whenever Bettie escapes from New York and romps in Florida. The major problem with the film is its characterization of Bettie. Here she's played as innocent and naive to the point of absurdity. The film shows her tripping in those high heels the first time Paula Klaw hands her a pair. To her, the photos are good clean fun and no big deal. At one point, dressed in trademark undies for a bondage shot, she even justifies her career by stating that Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden. <
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>Now while I don't buy that Bettie Page was innocent and naive, I also don't happen to think that Bettie Page was wicked or depraved either. Bettie Page was a complex woman--someone who suffered childhood sexual abuse, had complicated relationships with men, and compartmentalized contrasting elements of her life. She never drank alcohol and even returned down Howard Hughes, and she also posed in some fairly wild bondage shots (they seem mild in comparison to today's stuff, but for the times, they are wild). There's one scene with Bettie crawling on her hands and knees, blindfolded, gagged and chained to a long pole which she straddles as she crawls across the floor. Innocent and naive? No. Complicated? Yes. Bettie is portrayed here as unaltered by both her past and her present, and by concentrating on what she did rather than who she was, the script manages to make the bondage goddess dull. Basically, for this fan, the film is an unsatisfying fluff piece--displacedhuman

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Lifetime Presents...
For anybody not remotely familiar with pinup modeling or the McCarthy trials who'd like something as unchallenging and candycoated as the 1950's this is a movie for you. For ninety minutes we're shown a sickeningly pc study of American history from the dim pov of the most prolific sex symbol of the time. With two books, a fan club, and a ridiculous ammount of information available it is truly sad that this is the best they could do. Culling the cheap Canadian waters HBO sought to make a well-shot, well-acted, stilted made-for-tv movie and succeeded with flying colors. It should come as no surprise that behind this calculated misfire is the writer/director team of American Psycho, who like before, have their lead star and cinematographer carry the film. However unlike the adaptation of Ellis' book (which originally had Cronenberg attached to direct) the material to work from for a Bettie Page biopic is too opinionated on both the left and right with the facts left to be found somewhere in the middle. It simply ends up mindless fluff. Ironic too that the main theme of American Psycho is how facades make you sick (or hide how sick you really are) and in this case we never crack Bettie's surface. Unlike the Foster book sited in the credits we're never offered the slightest glimpse of a lonely, troubled person. She simply loves Jesus and is impervious to all harm. I was amazed the cast did as well with the material including genre vets Lili Taylor, David Strathairn, and Jarred Harris. Is Gretchen Mol a perfect choice for Bettie? Of course not. But does she work? Absolutely! But the talent of the cast can do little but make it watchable. It inevitably becomes spoof-worthy '50s propaganda that never shows Ms Page as a real person. It's unlikely their will be a film that ever will.