Trigger warning: review may have triggering sexual language.
I debated whether or not to make this a "One from the Vaults" column and decided against it. Despite being about 50s pinup and bondage queen Betty Page, it's a pretty un-exploity (and pretty standard) IFC-worthy biopic. It's a great story shot with stunning cinematography and vintage editing tricks.
The movie starts with Bettie growing up in rural Tennessee right outside of Nashville. She's constantly catching the eye of the guys in her town and ends up marrying a high school classmate before he ships off for WWII. After a series of pretty terrible events (including childhood abuse and a gut-wrenching rape scene), she goes to New York to be an actress.
She meets a photographer/cop on the beach and quickly becomes a successful pin-up model. Her stint in camera clubs (1950s dudes with cameras that use some jargon that allows them to take nudie photos without getting arrested) brings her to Irving Klaw, who reinvents Bettie as a bondage model and skyrockets her career. She has a good rein as the Pinup Queen of America before it all crashes down, forcing Bettie to reinvent herself again.
I love love love two things about this movie. (1) it was written, directed, and produced by women (2) they used some great cinematography tricks to make it look like a movie from that era: John Ford-style scene fades, crisp black and white, 8 mm camera grain, and vivid Technicolor when Bettie goes to Miami.
I also liked the messages of the film. One of the themes that popped up was unexpectedly about spirituality; Bettie firmly believed that you shouldn't let anyone else define your beliefs and that you can still validly call yourself Christian when other people condemn you for what you do/ who you are. (Bettie Page's thoughts on God are pretty interesting, from what little bits I've read)
Another message that dovetails into that is Bettie was never regretful about her pictures and seemed to see it as a way of giving back. She kept hammering in the point that the people who were into the not-so-vanilla pictures of her were "nice guys," a contrast to the extreme sexual violence she experienced growing up. It presents an interesting debate about what the public at the time (and hell, even now) considers "good urges" vs "bad urges."
Honestly, this would be a hard movie to blanket recommend. Like I tagged the review earlier, the film has some material that could definitely be triggering. It's also hard to recommend to just anybody based on the subject matter alone (ie, I'm not going to tell your grandma to watch a biopic that has nudity and riding crops).
But that aside? If you're interested in Bettie Page, about pop culture or censorship in the 1950s, or are even just looking for an interesting movie based on real life, I not only urge you to rent it, I say buy it. Just like how Ms. Pinup described her own career, it's a lot more fun than sitting in an office for eight hours.
Final Verdict: 9/10
buy The Notorious Bettie Page on Amazon
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