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Poster for Bettie Page Reveals All

Bettie Page Reveals All

2013 · 1h 41m · R Documentary
Directed by Mark Mori

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Overview

The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
72%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Page's natural beauty, charisma and genuine sense of fun - not to mention her 36-24-37 measurements - come clearly through in Mori's tale.

Kathryn Laskaris, Toronto Star
Rotten

An amateurish and oddly paced documentary, "Bettie Page Reveals All" nonetheless turns out to be revealing, if perhaps not in the way its makers intended.

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
Fresh

The best thing about this documentary portrait of the beloved 1950s pin-up is its meaty narration, courtesy of Page herself, speaking in the low, slightly gravelly register of an aging Southern belle.

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
Fresh

The film offers frank, matter-of-fact commentary that is far more illuminating than the talking-head encomiums served up by the likes of Perez Hilton, Dita Von Teese, and Hugh Hefner.

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Fresh

The film's reason for being, though, is the sound of Page's voice -- a worldly, aged Southern drawl -- as she recounts her life story from childhood through retirement.

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

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