Pretty Baby

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.

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"Pretty Baby" (1978): Usually, when a controversial film comes out, the hubbub dies off in a few weeks. Later, people wonder why anyone got upset at all. In this case, I think the opposite is the case. There WAS some buzz about "Pretty Baby" when it premiered in 1978, but NOW? People would be killing the director, photographer, and screen writers in the names of Decency & Righteousness. It's a crazy world. Photographed by Sven Nykvist (Ingmar Bergman's photographer), Louis Malle directed this Polly Platt screenplay about the real life New Orleans documentary photographer E.J. Bellocq. He spent much of his career photographing those no one else would – the prostitutes of N.O. - and eventually became involved with a young girl (Brooke Shields) raised by her prostitute single mother (Susan Sarandon), to be a prostitute herself. There's an interesting push/pull to this film. It is SO beautifully photographed, and the prostitutes shown SO human, there is much warmth in the scenes, yet the facts remain difficult to accept – life was what it was, and they did what they had to do to survive in the turn-of-the-century South. This is NOT a story of tragedy (except in personal terms that have nothing to do with the profession). Most everyone went about their days in matter-of-fact acceptance of their "station" in life, and did not get ulcers. They had a roof, decent money, good food, servants, and a place to raise their "accident" children. "Pretty Baby" asks you to step outside your contemporary world and standards, and try, just for two hours, to see another point of view. It's an interesting challenge…perhaps more now than even a mere 30 years ago.

It's 1917 Storyville, New Orleans. Illiterate willful twelve year old Violet (Brooke Shields)'s mother Hattie (Susan Sarandon) gives birth to a boy. They work in a high class brothel run by drug addict Nell. Ernest J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) pays to take up residence photographing mostly Hattie. Nell puts Violet's virginity up for auction to her customers. Violet is eager to join the business but the actual act is painful. Violet starts to work as a prostitute. Hattie marries a customer and moves to St. Louis without Violet. After getting a corporal punishment, Violet runs away and moves in with Bellocq starting a sexual relationship.

Violet's gleeful willing participation in her own degradation is compelling and infuriating. The most engaging scene is the auction. It is creepy with these entranced old men. That scene should be the climax. The movie cannot get any more creepy although it does try. Bellocq is all too quick to sleep with Violet. The movie meanders in the second half. It's all very sad. Brooke Shields is exceedingly young and the movie fits the definition of child porn. There is definitely some artistic merits but I don't know if it justifies pushing open the envelop.

How sad this movie was, for all of the characters involved. I thought Brooke Shields was excellent as a pre-pubescent nymphette, as Nabakov would say. And I think her acting verged on the almost absurd because she was caught somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Poor Violet, caught tragically between two worlds. But this film and its nudity, were far from disturbing. Louis Malle made the whole piece a sort of decadent, decaying artwork, which is exactly what New Orleans is. You can almost smell and touch the oak trees and plants that are overtaking Bellocq's house. I think that the key to this film is that one must watch it objectively instead of subjectively. The movie is a reflection of the Storyville era of New Orleans. If Malle had covered Shields, it would have been like Michelangelo being forced to cover his Sybils in the chapel; Something beautiful and poignant would have been lost. Watch this movie for a glimpse into the past of New Orleans, but don't forget to read the back of the box before you rent. It IS about prostitution.

I think it was a fine piece of film making about a horrific situation. I agree with a previous poster that its understated tone was one of its strengths. The film maker presents a detailed, rounded view of the lifestyle and its effects on a girl who is much too young and much too pretty to have been allowed to ply her trade.

One of the ways I judge the strength of a film is the extent to which I wonder "what happens next?" after the closing credits. I would say the film succeeded. From the expression on Violet's face in the closing shot, I think she had been so warped by everything she had seen and done that, no matter what, she would never be able to become a normal woman living a normal life. My fear is that whether she went back to prostitution or lived a presumptively respectable life, she would always be ignorant, impulsive, self-centered and someone who used her appearance to manipulate others. After all, she, like everyone else in the world, can only know what she has been taught.