Directed by:
MARY HARRON
Starring: GRETCHEN MOL, CHRIS BAUER, JARED HARRIS, LILI TAYLOR
Icon Film Distribution
(18 cert) ****
Mary Harron’s biopic about the fetish world’s most beloved icon has been a long time coming, but it’s been worth the wait. You could not ask for a more charming and affectionate portrayal of the Bettie Page legend.
The story, co-written by American Psycho director Harron with Preaching To the Perverted star Guinevere Turner, herself a longtime Bettie fan, concentrates on Page’s seven-year modelling career in 1950s New York, during which time she would become America’s top glamour model and queen of its underground fetish and bondage photo scene.
Gretchen Mol as Page is an inspired piece of casting, perfectly conveying the blend of naivety, sincerity and childlike enthusiasm that allowed this deeply religious girl from Tennessee to plunge herself, apparently without moral qualms, into the strange new world of post-war pervery. Although the brief opening glimpse of her earlier life in Nashville shows Bettie being abused by her father and later gang-raped, Harron does not suggest these events had any bearing on her subsequent choice of career. In fact the young Bettie is shown as an aspiring actress who took drama lessons in Greenwich Village, fell into glamour modelling by chance, and saw her subsequent work as a fetish and bondage model for Irving Klaw’s Movie Star News photo agency as little more than paid acting practice.
This is the version of history told by Page herself, and having accepted it, the movie does a fair job of making it seem credible that someone like Bettie could portray damsels in distress and dominatrices with such panache without apparently having any personal interest in the subject matter. This is something that even today, many of Page’s legion of fans don’t really want to believe.
With the exception of an episode set in Miami, where Bettie was photographed in colour by glamour photographer Bunny Yeager, The Notorious Bettie Page is filmed in black and white, which adds greatly to the atmosphere, allowing the seamless integration of carefully faked and authentic period footage. The film has great fun bringing to life some of the most familiar Bettie images by restaging the photo shoots that produced them (with Mol captured in identical poses), and Harron has even lovingly recreated some of the jerky black and white 8mm film shorts that Bettie and co made for Klaw, who is played here by Chris Bauer.
Klaw’s sister Paula (the excellent Lili Taylor, seen above with Jared Harris as John Willie) did most of the photography as well as tying up Bettie and the other girls. A number of her familiar anecdotes about the job have been neatly incorporated into the storyline, including the revelation that she frequently had to make the girls wear several layers of underwear to avoid falling foul of obscenity laws. It all seems so harmless, but this didn’t prevent the business being targetted by the era’s moral crusaders, and Irving’s appearance before a Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency in 1955 signified the beginning of the end both for Klaw and for Bettie’s modelling career. Ironically, this was the same year that she famously graced the Christmas cover of new men’s magazine Playboy.
Bettie is shown at the very beginning, and near to the end, of the story waiting outside the Senate hearing to be called to give evidence. As it turned out she never was called, but apparently those events affected her deeply, and the movie ends in 1957 with her departure from modelling and her return to preaching the ways of the Lord.
While The Notorious Bettie Page doesn’t manage to add much to our knowledge of its subject’s life (possibly because Page herself was contractually prevented from collaborating with the filmmakers), it does seem, on the whole, to be striving for an accurate retelling of the known facts. Its desire for authenticity is particularly noticeable in the efforts made in the wardrobe department. It’s no exaggeration to say that fans of vintage fetish garb will be salivating over the attention to detail in all the areas that really matter — the lingerie, the corsets, the stockings, the gloves and the high heels.
The film’s most obvious departure from how things really were is in its depictions of conversations between Page and legendary bondage artist John Willie (Jared Harris) which almost certainly never happened. There is scant evidence that Willie was ever involved in any of Bettie’s shoots for Klaw, and the director has admitted that his character was boosted in the story to create the opportunity for some meaningful dialogue. Since everyone else working with Bettie seems so decent and wholesome, Harris’s portrayal of the expatriate Brit as an urbane but slightly louche individual provides an entertaining contrast that makes the invention largely forgivable.
Nothing in this film could be called pornographic. I imagine the only reason it has an 18 certificate is some unabashed full frontal nudity from Gretchen Mol. It’s hard to imagine that any of the bondage or spanking games shown here could upset a modern censor. However racy it was considered back in the ’50s, it’s all terribly tame by modern standards. Which is sort of the point. But I’ll tell you something:
Gretchen Mol in her Bettie drag is as much of a head-turner now 
as Page herself was in her day.
There’s something about that look that is beguiling in a way that is truly timeless.
Ultimately it’s really the enigma of Bettie Page, rather than her notoriety, that this movie celebrates. That, and an era when all women wore seamed stockings. For some of us, that‘s reason enough to enjoy it. TM
For more info and cool downloads check the official website www.thenotoriousbettiepage.com
