Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie Review

Revelatory?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 13, 2014

Bettie Page never starred in a major motion picture, unless you count such exploitation fare as Striporama or Teasarama (not to mention the 16mm bondage flicks she made for Irving Klaw) “major”. Aside from a handful of guest appearances on things like variety shows, she also never made much of an impact on television, either. And with the exception of her January 1955 appearance in Playboy, her magazine appearances would hardly be considered “mainstream media”. And yet Bettie remains one of the most iconic images of the mid twentieth century, an image that has only continued to grow since Bettie’s death in 2008. Like many young girls growing up in the shadow of the Depression, Bettie Mae Page found escape in the glamour shots of the era’s famous movie stars, and as she relates in the first person audiotape interviews that provide the bulk of Bettie Page Reveals All’s narration, she and her sister used to dress up and attempt to mimic the poses they idolized. That may have planted some sublminal seed in Bettie’s psyche that was to come to full flower a couple of decades later, or perhaps Bettie simply knew subconsciously that she had some kind of special magic that communicated quite clearly through a camera lens. While she initially had plans to pursue a more mundane career as a teacher, a series of events intervened, including a disastrous screen test for 20th Century Fox which did not lead to the acting career Bettie hoped would materialize. But Bettie soon found her true calling, becoming a pin-up model and for a while anyway achieving a certain level of fame, if never very much fortune, posing provocatively for both amateur photographers as well as for ubiquitous fifties “men’s magazines”, along with manifold appearances in a series of cheapie 16mm exploitation flicks that tended to cater to fetishists (some of whom would send in their “special requests” for content—along with appropriate costumes for Bettie to wear—which Klaw would then film).

Bettie may not have had any big screen appearances herself, but “Bettie” (as in a character) almost did, something that probably played into the resurgence of interest in the real life Page. In 1982 graphic novelist (and/or cartoonist, depending on how “artsy” you want to be) created an homage to old time serials with a publication that later became source material for The Rocketeer . In Stevens’ original conception, Cliff Secord’s girlfriend was clearly modeled on Bettie, though that particular conceit was jettisoned for the film version, probably because nervous bean counters were afraid that having a heroine who was a nude model and actress in bondage films didn’t exactly line up with the Disney image.

Bettie Page Reveals All shows that even though this late in life career boost certainly upped Bettie’s recognition factor, there’s little doubt that there had been an already quite sizable Bettie cult growing for some time, something perhaps aided by the fact that Bettie had more or less up and disappeared at the height of her fame (such as it was) in the late fifties. Producer-director Mark Mori (a multiple Oscar nominee for other documentaries) takes a more or less chronological look at Bettie’s life, though he perhaps cheekily utilizes Rocketeer-esque comic book panels as interstitials to place us in various time periods.

While the subject matter here is certainly ripe for discovery and inspection, Mori perhaps provides an at times only surface level appreciation of a woman who must have somehow inspired him, since he obviously took the time to track her down and record copious interviews with her, interviews which form the narrative backbone of the piece. It is in fact Bettie’s reminiscences that are the best part of Bettie Page Reveals All. She’s not especially insightful about her own life, but just hearing all the anecdotes from her in her slightly drawled, quite elderly sounding, voice gives the documentary a sense of verisimilitude that some of Mori’s presentation actually doesn’t. Some of the interview subjects also help to shed light on Bettie's rather innocent predisposition. There's one nicely insightful anecdote about Bettie getting arrested for posing in the nude in the woods, and her resolute refusal to be charged with public indecency, since she found nothing indecent about her body.

Where Bettie Page Reveals All fails to do justice to Bettie is in its glossing over of several key elements of her life. Bettie is positively sanguine about appearing in bondage films, and she doesn’t even seem particularly phased by having been gang raped by a bunch men in New York or (perhaps even worse) fondled by her father in childhood. However, it's one thing for an individual not to want to dwell on these events, and quite another for a documentarian not to want to peer into them a bit more discerningly. Mori more or less completely stays away from what is arguably Page’s most interesting evolution, becoming a born again evangelical who reportedly worked for Billy Graham for quite some time. Page’s well documented mental issues (she spent close to a decade in various institutions) is also given somewhat short shrift in this piece, though again Bettie doesn’t seem to be that concerned about this particularly sad chapter, stating that it’s no one else’s business but hers. Again, while it's understandable that Page may not want prying eyes looking into her past foibles, the documentary would have been better served with more expert opinions being offered on what exactly ailed Page.

While arguably still on the shallow side, Mori at least does get some “expert” feedback from the likes of Hugh Hefner (who featured Page in Playboy in 1955) and a variety of celebrities, all of whom discuss Page’s impact on American culture. Page herself comes off as a sweet natured naïf who never quite “got” how iconic she became (there’s a particularly interesting phone call between Page and Klaw’s widow where Page more or less says this very thing). Something in Page’s vivacious nature spoke first to American men of the 1950s but soon went viral in a way, spreading out to the public at large. Hefner states that he thinks Page stands as one of the prime archetypes of the sexual awakening of America in the post-World War II era. Others with a less philosophical bent may see in Page a simple country girl who somehow stumbled into a kind of bizarre little niche where she quickly achieved a somewhat skewed but still impressive version of The American Dream.

Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bettie Page Reveals All is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer mostly in 1.78.1 (the documentary uses a glut of archival footage and stills, many of which are in widely varying aspect ratios). While it's of course understandable that much of the stock footage and older film of Bettie arrives in varying conditions of sharpness and clarity, perhaps surprisingly even the contemporary interview segments are not overly detailed or sharp looking (see screenshots 2 and 4). Actually some of the best looking material here is still photography and the cartoon panels, most of which offer good contrast and solid black and white (stills) or colors (cartoons). Despite the interlaced presentation, only very minor combing artifacts are noticeable in some of Bettie's more frenetic dance moves.

Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bettie Page Reveals All has a fairly front-centric DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that presents Bettie's voiceovers and the talking heads segments quite clearly and cleanly (it's obvious Bettie's recorded segments come from archival audio). Mori unfortunately slathers on a bit too much source music throughout the documentary, which, while providing the most consistent surround activity in the mix, still becomes overbearing at times. Fidelity is excellent and the track sports no issues of any kind.

Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filth and Obscenity: A Bettie Page Reveals All Bonus Reel (1080i; 8:43) contains some pretty funny footage from old "warning" films attempting to keep the horrors of pornography from impressionable youth.


• The Early Years: Audio Interview with Bettie (480i; 16:12) contains some great still photographs as well.


• Unreleased Phone Call Between Bettie and Paula Klaw (480i; 13:35). Maybe it's just me, but Paula seems a lot more excited to be talking to Bettie than vice versa.


• Irving Klaw's Wiggle Movies Starring Bettie - Restored! (1080p; 25:11)


• "Bettie Page" by Buzz Campbell (1080p; 2:45)


• Bettie's Exclusive Pin-Up Gallery (1080p)


• Bettie's Funeral (480i; 3:02)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 2:17)

Bettie Page Reveals All Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are still probably lots of people who would recognize a photo of Bettie Page without knowing exactly who she was, and for those folks Bettie Page Reveals All will certainly provide the general outlines of her life. However, the cult of Bettie runs deep, and my hunch is the most rabid of her fans will be aching for something deeper and more insightful than what is presented here. There is an undeniably ineffable quality about Bettie, and so part of this documentary's approach is completely understandable, but there are still some major events in Bettie's life that are curiously unexamined (or at least under examined) in Bettie Page Reveals All. Still, the documentary is a good generalist introduction to its subject, and it's absolutely stuffed with great archival stills and movies, along with a number of nice interviews with people who knew and worked with Bettie. The single most impressive thing about Bettie Page Reveals All is hearing Bettie herself speak about her life in such a natural, unforced fashion. This Blu-ray has okay if unspectacular looking video, but the supplementary package is quite appealing. Recommended.