The Notorious Bettie Page

July 19, 2007

Rated: R Runtime: 90 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Let’s just get this out of the way first; Gretchen Mol is SMOKIN hot! OK, now we can proceed.

The Notorious Bettie Page is a documentary that’s not a documentary, but is documentary-ish… kinda like a Michael Moore film. I went into this not knowing anything about Bettie Page other than she was a hot pinup model from the 50’s and that she also did some bondage photos. Now I know that her mother was too strict, she married her first boyfriend who proceeded to beat her, after leaving him she was gang raped and then fled to New York City for a new life. She was also a very smart girl in school, barely missing out on a scholarship to Vanderbilt and was an aspiring actress before giving it all up and dropping out of the spotlight.

I guess I just kinda told you the entire plot of the movie, though I don’t think that counts as a spoiler due to the nature of the film.

Most of the movie deals with Bettie’s participation in creating bondage photos and films, both because it’s an excuse to show Gretchen in leather outfits and because of the scandal such photos caused back then. On a side note, it’s amazing how tame these photos are when you look at them now. We also see Bettie do some nude modeling and for that I’m quite grateful. Did I mention that Gretchen Mol is SMOKIN hot? Oh yeah, I did.

One complaint I have about the movie, and this is a rare complaint to make, is that it’s a little too short. It’s only 90 minutes long and at the 80 minute mark I was wondering how the director was going to wrap up the movie in just 10 minutes. Then answer is that he didn’t. Apparently in real life Bettie found Jesus while on vacation in Miami and dropped out of the business and the spotlight very quickly, and that’s just what happens in the movie. After the church scene we get one more of her preaching in Central Park before the credits roll. I would have appreciated a little more story here on what happened when she went back to NYC, what her friends did, etc.

Overall it’s a pretty good movie if you’re interested in the story, and is certainly worth watching if you’d like to see Gretchen Mol naked, and who wouldn’t want to see that?

Posted by John | Filed Under 3 Stars, DVD, David Strathairn, Documentary, Drama, Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, R