Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
A solid if conventional biographical documentary elevated primarily by its central subject's remarkable life story and the rare access to Page's own final interview. The plot follows a fairly standard cradle-to-grave documentary structure, though the material itself is genuinely compelling given Page's cultural significance and the historical context of the sexual revolution. The 'acting' here refers to on-screen presence and interview subjects, which are serviceable but unremarkable beyond Page's own gravelly narration. Cinematography is typical archival-footage documentary fare — competent but not visually inventive. Novelty is modestly above average thanks to the inclusion of Page's own voice correcting the record in her final interview, lending it a firsthand authenticity most biopics lack. The ending, drawing on Page's own expressed wishes about her legacy, lands with some emotional resonance.