'The Notorious Bettie Page' recreates a '50s icon

At a time when pornography is readily available at the click of a computer mouse, the days of pin-up photographs sold in plain brown wrappers or kept carefully guarded in backroom stashes seem so remote.

Picturehouse 'The Notorious Bettie Page' B The verdict: A celebrated '50s pin-up queen steps out of the shadows and out of her clothes. Director: Mary Harron Starring: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, David Strathairn, Jonathan M. Woodward, Cara Seymour Run time: 90 minutes Release date: April 14, 2006 Rating: R for nudity, sexual content and some language. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'The Notorious Bettie Page'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

But with a wink and a come-hither gesture, filmmaker Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho) takes us back to that age of innocence, the 1950s. It was then that a lass from Nashville named Bettie Page rose to prominence by doffing her clothes, an act that incited Congressional hearings.

Although much of The Notorious Bettie Page is photographed in hard-edged black-and-white and an early melodramatic incident finds our naïve heroine gang raped, this is not a tale of wanton behavior punished. Bettie crawled away from her attackers, cleaned herself up, hopped a bus to New York City and soon was flashing her big eyes — and other more intimate parts of her anatomy — for an appreciative, if furtive, clientele.

Gretchen Mol, a much-hyped starlet whose career never took off the way it was supposed to, plays Bettie with a sunny sweetness that probably veers from reality, but makes it clear she was no victim. Even when she meets Irving (Chris Bauer) and Paula Klaw (Lili Taylor) and they introduce her to the world of bondage modeling, Bettie accepts the assignment, confident that it is doing good, aiding men with "special needs."

Harron, who wrote the tongue-in-cheek screenplay with Guinevere Turner, recreates the feeling of the Eisenhower era with stock footage, vibrant color interludes of Bettie's trips to Florida and faux-home movies. Chances are you will be left with more questions about Bettie than you had at the movie's beginning, but such mysteries do not seem to faze the winsome Mol in the least.