Some nice frames of
Gretchen Mol nude from movie of from movie The Notorious Bettie Page
Gretchen plays the woman who grew up in a conservative religious family in Tennessee, only to become a famous pin-up girl and Playboy centerfold.
Essentially, The Notorious Bettie Page is a film about just how much the world has changed in the last 50 years.
Although tame compared with what is available at the click of a
mouse button nowadays, the under-the-counter bondage movies and
pictures which 1950s erotic icon Bettie Page featured in during her
career were explosive stuff, even prompting a McCarthy-esque Senate
inquiry into how they might corrupt the nation's youth.
It is that witch-hunt which provides the backdrop to this
entertaining story of Page's life, from her strict Southern upbringing
to her transformation into one of the world's first fetish queens, by
way of a string of unsuccessful relationships.
American Psycho director Mary Harron does a great job of evoking the
prim and proper morals of 1950s America where, we find out, even just
taking pictures of a woman entirely in the nude could get you slung in
jail.
Rising star Gretchen Mol gets to grips well with her character,
transforming her from a bubbly but proper Southern gal into a vampish
dominatrix with, quite literally, the wink of an eye.
In this she is ably helped by a solid supporting cast of well-known
character actors, including the excellent Jared Harris as a boozy but
roughly charming photographer.
David Strathairn's portrayal of Page's tormentor, Senator Estes
Kefauver, also contrasts nicely with his role as the crusading
journalist Edward Murrow in last year's 1950s-set hit Good Night and
Good Luck.
Despite nods towards violence and abuse in Page's early life, the film never strays too far from its lighthearted tone.
And although it never quite hits the heights of social satire it
aspires to, The Notorious Bettie Page recreates an old fashioned sense
of innocence and wonder about sex and voyeurism which, in this day of
smutty reality TV shows, is fast becoming a thing of the past.
The Notorious Bettie Page DVD will be released on 26th of September 2006.