Bettie Page Reveals All (2012)

BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL  (2012)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mark Mori
There's a house I go by every time I ride the bus between Lake Forest Park and downtown Seattle. It's a gray, two-story house overlooking I-5, and the thing you notice about it, that you can't help noticing, is that painted on the side where it faces the freeway, 20 feet high, at least, is a mural of Bettie Page. It's unmistakably her, with her trademark bangs and lingerie, a horizontal strip of roofing strategically blocking out the parts of Bettie that passing puritans might not want to see. You wouldn't think a pinup model whose career ended in 1957 would be getting that kind of recognition today, but as the photographic evidence in this documentary shows, Bettie Page was no ordinary pinup model. She had an ease in front of the camera and a disarming sense of fun that couldn't be faked, even when she was gagged and strung up in bondage gear, or posing in nothing at all. Like Louise Brooks in the '20s, Page had a look, combined with an openly sexual persona, that transcended her relatively short time in the spotlight. This film won't be the last word on Bettie, or her influence on popular culture. It reveals a lot, but not all, and parts of it are annoyingly superficial. Page retired at 34 and spent the next 50 years mostly not being photographed, so Mori understandably zeroes in on her public heyday in the 1950s. Her life before and after that was anything but glamorous: a troubling cycle of abuse, mental illness, failed marriages and religious obsession. But glance at even a few of those modeling shots, at the girl with the bangs and the look and the body that went with it, and a couple of things become clear. No matter what people thought then or think now, she was a woman who loved her work. And she was good at what she did. 

To look at pictures of the Bettie Page House, google "Bettie Page House Seattle." To look at pictures of Bettie Page, google "Bettie Page."