Pretty Baby (1978)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Brooke Shields became a household name for her performance as twelve year old Violet, a prostitute's daughter, raised in a New Orleans whorehouse. Susan Sarandon does a terrific job playing her mother, Hattie. Frances Faye is a scene stealer in her final film performance as Nell who owns and operates the whorehouse. Keith Carradine plays a photographer who takes a serious interest in the women and girls as more than objects. Brooke Shields' Violet is the pretty baby who is surrounded by sex and knows nothing else. The scenes in which Violet's innocence, youth, and virginity are exploited by Nell and the others who live there as a suitable way to make a living is disturbing. Violet's virginity is auctioned off as a commodity to the highest bidder is definitely something that would shock film audiences of 1978. Nell says "there are two things to do in New Orleans on a rainy day and I don't like to play bridge!" Is a classic film line. Violet's life in New Orleans is tragic and sad but she manages to understand and comprehend her surroundings.

Set during the final weeks of legal prostitution in Storyville, New Orleans, the whorehouse ran by the ageing Madame Nell (Frances Faye) is quietly coming to an end. This is unknown to the employees, who are going about their work and earning their money. Ernest Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a real-life photographer who took the famous Storyville prostitute portraits, arrives and takes an special interest in the beautiful Hattie (Susan Sarandon), and her 12-year old daughter Violet (Brooke Shields). Violet is a confident, bratty and adventurous girl who is groomed to be the star attraction at the brothel by Hattie and Madame Nell. As the men queue up for Violet, Bellocq also becomes enamoured with her, and the two start a strange love affair.For such a monstrously ugly subject, Pretty Baby is a strikingly beautiful film. The idea of child prostitution is repulsive but was a very real thing back in the 1917-era (and obviously still exists today under a much more secretive veil). It takes a very brave director to even consider tackling such a subject, and then to do it with such elegance, truth and respect. The both cosy and dank whorehouse pulses with life and realism, to the point where it feels like the film was actually filmed in the time. Minor details such as the peeling paint on the window ledges and the layers of dust on the bookshelves adds an authenticity rarely seen.The film was extremely controversial in its day (and would still be if it was released today) for its full-frontal nudity of a 12-year old Brooke Shields. It is undoubtedly uncomfortable to watch at times, but as hard as it is to say, it is necessary to truly see who she is, and what the men want her for, which makes the whole thing even more horrific and wrong. The scene where she is carried into a room and flaunted as a virgin to rich, cigar-smoking older men who start a bidding war to take her virginity, left me cold. It is a truly powerful scene, and when we later see her naked in her youth, all fragile and undeveloped, it almost made me sick.Shields, who is clearly not the most talented actress in the world, is genuinely brilliant here. Full of natural beauty and swaggering maturity, her character is a complex mixture of the naive, the immature, and the wise-beyond-her-years. She seems more than ready, and eager to start work, and has the natural ability to wrap a man around her little finger. Years growing up in a brothel has seemingly left her unable to feel. And when she begins her relationship with Bellocq, it is unclear if she truly loves him, or she is simply acting to get the life she desires. If you can stomach the taboo subject matter, this is a fascinating film, rich with great acting, complex characters and a smart script, handled with an individuality and grace by the great Louis Malle.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

The nudity doesn't ultimately add anything to the story (hence porn) and the nudity in question is of a child (hence child porn). If the movie was exactly the same but the lead actress was older, no one would make the argument that the nudity added anything, because the whole point of it is the added impact it makes thanks to Brooke Shields being twelve. Seems pretty straightforward to me.Giving the film-makers the benefit of the doubt, it seems to assume we're going to have a particular reaction to child nudity, something like "oh no, how awful it was for children in that situation back then!" But all the truly unpleasant abuse has to occur off-screen for obvious reasons, so any dramatic impact is toothless. None of the nudity is placed within a context that forces the audience to confront how awful it is, on the contrary it's all supremely tasteful, partly thanks to the whitewashed characterization of the most artificially appealing pedophile in cinema history, Bellocq. And by using real child nudity in an attempt to demonstrate how exploitative of children people were back then, the film ignores its own message.It doesn't help that there effectively is no story. There's almost no focus on what Violet is actually feeling at all, instead there's an alternation between scenes where she acts like a child and scenes where she earns her keep as a prostitute. I got the impression I was supposed to sympathize with the character solely because she was a child in a sh!tty situation, not because the writers gave her interesting traits, or at the very least, conveyed an impression of how she saw the world.We could argue how to define porn, of course, but I don't think that's difficult: it's where the nudity is the point. If this movie hadn't had Brooke Shields naked no one would even remember it, as there's little dramatic content and no plot. The main character has, from beginning to end, no ultimate control over her fate - and regardless of how realistic that is it still makes for a lousy story. If they had made the narrative more character-based, so it hinged on something that Violet could have some influence over, perhaps a story about a child prostitute in this era could have worked... but not like this.1/10, one of the most pathetically misguided art-house exploitation flicks ever.

While best known for the controversy it inevitably ignites whenever it's mentioned, this is, in reality, a fantastic film. You have to feel a little sorry for Brooke Shields, as her starring in this essentially screwed her up psychologically something fierce, but she does give her one and only exceptional performance in it as a 12 year old girl living in a New Orleans whorehouse. She is being groomed for a life in the world's oldest profession by a rickety old madame and even her mother (Susan Sarandon). Meanwhile, a bizarre photographer (Keith Carradine) enters this world to take pictures. He's allowed to stick around every day because, I don't know, I suppose they think he might bring them some fame or at least advertisement, and because they assume he's a homosexual and nonthreatening. Over the course of the film, his relationship with Shields blossoms, but you're never really sure what his deal is. Personally, I do think he was a pedophile. While the prostitutes are always trying to turn Shields into a seasoned whore, Carradine is always insisting that she remain a child. Yet he is most certainly interested in a romantic relationship, as well, even while he wants to pretend it's a father/daughter relationship. So, really, I should probably be disgusted with Carradine, but why do I feel so sad when Sarandon shows up at the end, after he and Shields have been married, to take her away? Pretty Baby is an extremely complex film, emotionally, and it's gorgeously directed in a very subtle style by Malle, who might very well be my favorite French director. The final moment of the movie has Shields, about to become an actual little girl for the first time in her life, having her picture taken by her stepfather. The final freeze frame is every bit as perfect as the one that ends Truffaut's The 400 Blows.