Watch The Notorious Bettie Page For Free

Admirable film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The Notorious Bettie Page As far as the general public is concerned Betty Page was a hair stylist.Luckily, this biography about the infamous banged icon can elucidate them.After leaving her sexually abusive upbringing for a fresh start - and new hairdo - in NYC, good Christian Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) takes an innocent modelling job for photographer Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson), alongside jungle cats.Bunny's muse attracts smut-peddling siblings (Lili Taylor, Chris Bauer), who take Betty underground where her bondage photos and films thrive on the fetish market.Her erotic portfolio eventually lands the naïve bible thumper before a 1955 commission on youth and pornography.An intimate and engaging study of history's most elusive and influential pin-up model, this 2005 Indy darling from director Mary Harron beautifully tells Betty's depressing story of faith, filth and accidentally infamy.Nevertheless, the submissive in any BDSM relationship is always the one cleaning up afterwards. Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Bettie Page was the most photographed woman of the '50s, and a look at both her life and the nature of sexuality in America at that time would make for a pretty solid biopic. But at 90 minutes, there's no hope of examining everything. That said, THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE does cover the broad strokes. It's very nicely photographed, in both black and white and a blast of chroma during the Miami period. I loved David Strathairn's bit part as Joseph McCarthy, a nice joke on his Edward R. Murrow performance. And the animated magazine covers was a novel touch; this is a well-produced little movie. But it's the nail-on-the-head casting of Gretchen Mol in the titular role that's the real reason to watch this. Mol is perfect; she's gorgeous and seems to imbue that almost innocent quality of the real-life Page, a woman who wasn't inhibited because she didn't see the harm in taking pictures in less (or no) clothing. I was already a fan of the actress, but to her immense credit, she brings the role to life on the screen. Her work here is top-notch. 7/10

I never feel a dramatic work is successful if at the end I can't figure out why anyone bothered to make it. And that's my problem with this movie. Sure, Gretchen Mol is wonderful, radiating a natural charm and sense of fun that make you really believe that this girl could become a pin-up obsession, and I like the period photography, but the movie doesn't seem to really be about anything.While this movie is about Bettie Page, it doesn't really tell us anything about her. It tells a little of her life - traumatic incidents, failed relationships, acting aspirations - but Bettie seems to wander around with all the thought of a kitten.There are people in this world who live like that, and Bettie may have been one of them, a girl free of introspection (although reading wikipedia suggests she may have been more complex), but that doesn't excuse the lack of introspection in the movie itself. It's not just that this movie doesn't explain Bettie - some people are inexplicable - or that she has a sudden, unpersuasive change of life at the end, it's that the movie doesn't explain *anything*. It makes no attempt to give context to this 1950s battle against pornography (so mild that now you can find stronger stuff on youtube. Its stock supporting characters never come to life, in spite of the talent of the actors involved. The movie doesn't seem to want to say anything about anything.Why was this movie made? Because Bettie Page has a cult following and because Gretchen Mol looks really good naked. But that's not a good enough reason to make a movie.

In the 1890s you couldn't show an ankle, now the internet is awash in explicit sexuality of the most diverse sort. Bettie Page came somewhere in between, like the 1950s, when brassieres were conical and foundation garments (that is, girdles) were the ne plus ultra of sensuality in magazines with titles like "Tip and Toe" and "Black Stockings." It's probably an interesting story of Bettie Page's rise to fame as a model in these schlock magazines and movies but you won't find it here.What you find here is a rather routine story of a not-so-young girl from Nashville, Tennessee, who isn't ashamed of her body, despite the calumny of her family and the Baptist church She's a kind of Candide among sharks. Good thing too. There are one or two scenes of Gretchen Moll naked, full frontal, and a couple of reenactments of her role in mild S/M movies that ought to turn on the preverts among us and every British man on earth.I don't know why I should bother outlining the story. You could probably write it yourself between snoozes. Bettie, you'll be surprise to find out, relishes the prospect of giving pleasure to others, as long as it preserves her virtue. In fact there is a nicely done scene of Bettie being unwittingly lured into a gang bang as a youth, probably fabricated. Oh, and there's also a suggestion of sexual abuse. Ho hum.Sadly, once she gets into the major leagues, her managers push the envelope too far and she gets into trouble. And all because she's a Rousseauian savage.This is an HBO production. They've come up with some fine, challenging stuff -- Citizen X and others -- but this isn't one of them.I have a poster of Bettie Page on the wall of my hallway. She's not particularly attractive. I'll tell you why it's there. I have a preverted brother who was fond of her. And I have a young lady chat friend who is an Argentinian midget who asked if I knew anything about her. Queries from two such sources were impossible to forget, so I ordered a poster. Haven't looked at it in years.