The Notorious Bettie Page

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2005

The Notorious Bettie Page
Mary Harron
USA, 2005
English 100 minutes Colour and Black and White/35mm
Production Company: Killer Films/ John Wells Productions/HBO Films
Executive Producer: John Wells
Producer: Pamela Koffler, Katie Roumel, Christine Vachon
Screenplay: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cinematographer: W. Mott Hupfel III
Editor: Tricia Cooke
Production Designer: Gideon Ponte
Sound: Ben Cheah, Wyatt Sprague
Music: Mark Suozzo
Principal Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, Jonathan M. Woodward, David Strathairn, Jared Harris
Production: Killer Films

Mary Harron may be considered a provocateur, but she never resorts to shock tactics or simplified polemics. Her approach is one of intelligence and an almost scientific detachment, tempered with a quiet tenderness toward her pariah subjects. In her latest film, Harron fixes her gaze on the figure of fifties pin-up queen Bettie Page.

The film follows Page from her childhood in Nashville to New York, where she moves to pursue her acting dreams. To make ends meet, Page starts modelling and soon gets into nude photography; it is not long before she is posing for sado-masochistic fetish pics. She becomes the first celebrity bondage model in the United States and finds herself at the centre of a Senate investigation into pornography. Soon after, in 1958, she undergoes a rather sudden religious conversion and disappears from the public eye.

A bodacious Gretchen Mol plays Page and, like Harron, she does not give away the secrets behind Page’s dazzling eyes and smile. The Page we see reproduced onscreen is almost eerily the same sweet, but eternally enigmatic figure we know so well from her iconic image. Although the film frankly recounts darker chapters of Page’s personal history such as physical and sexual abuse, it stops far short of drawing conclusions about the trajectory of her life. This light touch is apt: while The Notorious Bettie Page is a political film, it is not an unnecessarily cerebral one. It offers moments of delectable visual beauty and joie de vivre—not least of which are provided by Mol posing with Bettie Page-esque enthusiasm.

The Notorious Bettie Page renders its story and its viewpoints through the finest modulations of tone, opting for a stripped-down naturalism that nevertheless retains the rich colours of fifties cheesecake. This honest, intrepid portrait has the brains and understated elegance of true seduction.
—Noah Cowan