The Notorious Bettie Page

If you’ve got a real problem with pornography—either philosophically, morally, or personally—The Notorious Bettie Page is probably not for you. You’ll see enough of Gretchen Mol in the title role (and often enough) that you might easily forget what this movie is about. And if, like a lot of men I know, bondage fantasies have damaged your psyche, you really don’t need this kind of stimulation.

Still, Notorious manages to celebrate innocent sexuality. Without ever really showing us any. Before Page ever leaves her native 1950s Nashville, she’s introduced to the darker side of sexuality—right in her own home. When she does leave the nest, her marriage ends in abuse. Close on the heels of that episode, she’s gang-raped—and things don’t really get any better for her from there.

When she heads to the big city, she falls in with small-time pornographers who soon enough get big enough. Page sees no harm in the cheesecake-lingerie and pinup-calendar bathing-suit sessions she does, and she even enjoys a buff day in the park (or the surf); but Page really has no clue what the leather, whips, and heels are all about. That bit’s all just a mystery to her. It ain’t no mystery for the men, however.

Eventually, she starts figuring things out, though—and finds her salvation in learning how to say “no” to men. For Page, that’s a long and torturous road. And the only helpful signposts along the way come from—yes—the church. By movie’s end, Page is preaching in Central Park, still proud of her body, her photographs, and her confidence in honest sexual joy. But she finds she’s more comfortable with a Bible in her hands than she is with ropes and patent leather.

To be sure, there’s plenty of wink-wink and nudge-nudge in Notorious. But writer-director Mary Harron presents such a matter-of-fact portrayal of Page’s story that we’re also quite confident that there’s more to the Hefner worldview than just silk robes and martinis. It’s not all merely innocent fun. There’s a lot of secretive twistedness, too.

If Pleasantville sang the praises of unfettered sexual awakening, The Notorious Bettie Page employs a similar black-and-white-world-gone-color technique to reach quite a different conclusion: that there’s bondage and blinders, and then there’s moral restraint—and that there’s a world of difference between the two. Pleasantville threw off the former while glibly dismissing the latter; Notorious takes both equally seriously.