A tantalizing nugget lies half-buried in Mark Mori’s engaging documentary about Bettie Page, the 1950s pinup who’s inspired an endlessly self-renewing retro-cult of fans both male and female.
In the middle of a screening of Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page, it seems, a voice was heard yelling “Lies! All lies!”
That voice belonged to Page herself, it turned out — and I’d give a great deal to learn what it was that so incensed a woman who, after all, took unalloyed pleasure in the unorthodox modeling career she fell into and the killer body that went with it.
Mori refers to Harron’s 2005 biopic, a touch snidely, as “unauthorized.” I didn’t much care for the earlier movie, but why wouldn’t it be? For better and worse, The Notorious Bettie Page was a work of fiction, and the least of its troubles was misinformation. “Authorized” has its drawbacks, and among them in this instance is the rather worshipful tone of Mori’s Bettie Page Reveals All.
That said, it’s not hard to see why so many people show up in his movie to testify their love for Page — from Hugh Hefner, who helped her get decent representation after she moved to Los Angeles, to televangelist Robert Schuller, who conducted her memorial service. Her style was a major influence on performers such as Beyoncé, the film argues, and her voluptuous curves the envy of a fleet of twiggy supermodels.