The Notorious Bettie Page

The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) — watch online this biographical drama directed by Mary Harron, with Gretchen Mol playing the pin-up model who became one of the strangest flashpoints of 1950s America. Harron previously directed American Psycho, and she brings the same cool, unblinking eye to this portrait.

Bettie Page left a conservative Tennessee upbringing behind and landed in New York, where her images — beach shots, burlesque poses, leather-and-rope scenarios — spread through mail-order catalogs and men's magazines nationwide. That reach alarmed enough people to put her before the Kefauver Senate hearings investigating obscenity's effect on public morals. Bettie appeared, answered questions, and seemed genuinely puzzled by the fuss. Jared Harris, Sarah Paulson, and David Strathairn round out the cast.

Harron shoots portions of the film in black and white to echo the grain and flatness of the era's photography. She refuses to cast Bettie as either victim or provocateur — just a woman whose cheerful ease in front of a camera confused a country that needed her to be one thing or the other. Watch The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) online on iFILM.