The Notorious Betty Page – Pretty Betty Without The Sleaze

Article first published as Movie Review The Notorious Betty Page – Pretty Betty Without The Sleaze on Blogcritics.

The Notorious Betty Page is one of those movies that really has all the potential in the world for gratuitous nudity and all around lasciviousness. It would be so easy to go that route that it’s all the more surprising that it doesn’t. We follow the iconic Betty Page (Gretchen Mol) through her adolescence and early marriage in cliff-note style and it’s clear that we are dealing with a young lady who is in possession of a substantial intelligence as well as beauty. She is also surprisingly naïve, despite the hints at child abuse and spousal abuse and the tastefully showed gang rape she is subjected to when she first tries to make it on her own.

Betty wants a career as a model/actress, but finds that there is a more lucrative way of making a living posing in “special clothing” and all the trappings of sado-masochism and fetish ware. At the time having an interest in leather corsets and boots that go all the way to there, was not considered fashionably chic, the way it is today. It was considered aberrant and deviant sexual behaviour to such a degree that it was illegal.

Betty is offered the job by Irving (Chris Bauer) and Paula Klaw (Lili Taylor) and she poses for a good many pictures and even some shorter films that feature fetish ware and various scenes that include spanking and bondage. What strikes me as interesting about this particular movie is that all this is portrayed as dressing up in good fun, kind of light-hearted and not particularly sinister. Things only get sinister when Betty is called to testify at a 1955 hearing investigating the negative effects of pornography on the youth of America. She never actually makes it in to the courtroom, but that certainly means the innocence is gone.

Betty tries to get regular acting jobs as well, but she is too well-known, hence the notorious part, and finds herself drifting in Miami where she ambles in to a church and is saved. That part s a little peculiar, but then, real life often is. Betty puts her modelling days behind her and goes on to work as a Christian missionary, and yes, there’s a joke in there somewhere.

Some of the sensibility of the movie most likely has to do with the fact that it has a female writer/director, as well as a female producer. Most of it, except the scenes that take place in Miami, is shot in black-and-white, which really does something to capture the 1950s feel. Gretchen Mol is a very pretty Betty, and a good look alike, too. One of the things said about Betty Page was that she somehow seemed more dressed when naked and that she always seemed very comfortable when in front of the camera, and that is certainly not an easy feat to pull off. There is something about this kind of attitude to nudity that de-sexualises it, no matter how explicit the scene, ironically.

1950s pornography is surrounded by some kind of nostalgia, clearly, and there’s more than one classic pinup girl pose here that just seems quaint. This Betty Page is very much portrayed as smart, sensitive and playful, very much a real person, which is, again, surprising. There are many instances where things honestly could have gotten much grimmer for Betty, which is not to say that she doesn’t occasionally get herself into trouble. To my mind there is still a very carefully calculated objectivity to the overall feel of the movie which shows that this is not done for sensationalism, but it is not offering any conclusions either.

At the end of the day I am not sure if we are left with a drama, a kind of documentary, a piece of social commentary, a cautionary tale or none of the above. And I am strangely okay with that.

The Notorious Betty Page (2005) directed by Mary Harron stars Gretchen Mol (Betty Page), Chris Bauer (Irving Klaw), Lili Taylor (Paula Klaw), Jared Harris (John Willie), Sarah Paulson (Bunny Yeager), David Strathairn (Estes Kefauver), Norman Reedus (Billy Neal), Cara Seymour (Maxie).

Rounders – poker and morality

Rounders (1998) directed by John Dalh stars Matt Damon as Mike McDermott, Edward Norton as Worm, John Turturro as Joey Knish, Famke Janssen (Petra), John Malkovich (Teddy KGB), Martin Landau (Abe Petrovsky), Gretchen Mol (Jo).

This is ostensibly a story about playing cards, but more than that it is a morality play, weirdly enough. It all starts with a huge big loss. Mike sits down to play with Teddy KGB and loses everything he owns in one fell swoop. He decides that he’s done, he’s getting out. That means forsaking his dream of winning the world series of poker. He is studying law at the same time and now he’s reduced to driving a delivery truck on the night shift to get by instead.

Mike is a likeable guy. He’s got a pretty girlfriend, Jo, and a judge who really likes him, Abe Petrovsky, and friends who wish him well. He has a set of principles when it comes to playing cards that imply he can beat pretty much anyone by skill and he thinks he is going to be a lawyer. All that gets thrown out the window when his old friend Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison.

The second Worm walks out the prison gates all bets are off. Worm is a mechanic, which means he cheats any way he can, including dealing from the bottom of the deck. Mike is adamant about not playing anymore, but Worm sucks him back into the game with hardly any effort at all.

See, here’s the thing – Mike actually has it all. He has a pretty girl, good friends, a good career ahead of him, he has a sponsor/mentor and he has a clear path cut out. All of this means he won’t play poker anymore, but that is the price he is going to have to pay. Slowly, but surely, all that gets torn down through the machinations of his best friend Worm, who is basically a manipulative loser at best. Worm has none of those thing and judging from the voiceover he never has had them.

The voiceover (Matt Damon) works seamlessly in this setting. You don’t even question it, which I think is in part because the whole movie has a forties Noir feel to it. The style and the theme is perfect for it, as well as the general feel of the whole movie.

But, here’s the thing – at the end of the movie Mike has lost his girl, his potential career, his best friend and his money. He’s been beaten and mauled. And all this is a win in his book because he has the money to get in at the ground level of the poker world series with a theoretical chance of winning a million dollars. He insists that poker is about skill, not luck. He believes it is what he was “meant to do” and the advice given to him in convoluted form by Judge Abe Petrovsky seems to second that notion.

There are a lot of good things about this movie, like the stylishness of it, which is economical and spare, and the cast, which is solid and stellar. Norton is excellent as the weasel Worm and Malkovich goes bananas with the Russian accent. Landau plays the old hand like the old hand he is and Turturro is so calm and laid back that you want to poke him with a cattle prod just to see him twitch. Matt Damon is very strong as the all American guy with a huge brain. There are no interesting female characters in this, neither the overly sexualised Petra (Famke Jenssen) or the bland Jo (Gretchen Mol) make any kind of difference.

It has faults to mar its strong points too. Worm is the catalyst for Mike when it comes to getting him back in the game, but Worm’s own storyline has a very unsatisfactory resolution, which is to say no resolution at all. And Mike sort of rides off into the sunset, which is fine and in keeping with the narrative, but it seems to say that no matter how bright your future might seem you still have to follow your … well, I don’t think “heart” is the right word.

This guy, Mike, chooses a life of instability and loneliness and may very well end up like one of those pathetic losers that populate a movie like Ironweed or Barfly, and still manages to make it sound like the perfect happy ending. So, it’s a murky morals movie. I’m starting to feel that should be a genre all it’s own.

Mule