Too much of everything

Good concept, poorly executed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

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

Of course, this film is controversial, but it is mostly, if not completely, factual. It's the DEEP SOUTH, people. That's classic New Orleans. Catholic whores, whipping, swamps, children in the whorehouses, racism, the accent, the voodoo, the attitude, the sexuality. It's all part of the Deep South in the 20th Century. The only things missing are the crawdads and Mardi Gras. And I can understand the bad reviews, but those of you who do not think this is an excellent film do not understand the era nor the neck of the woods.What I liked about this film is the actuality. There are still actual whores who are 12 or younger. They are in the underbelly of the city, banned from the French Quarter. Of course, the whores portrayed were high-class. They were those one would find on Bourbon Street, although Bourbon's whores are much lower than that now. When Storyville was still running, the Red Light District would promote each slut it had. Even Madame Nell knows to auction off a preteen's virginity is illegal, but it still happened. I'm glad this film was made. Of course, American directors don't have the guts to display this kind of truth. I understand it may not have been necessary to show Shields nude, but if anyone has read the trivia, it states a large number of young girls turned the role down. Her parents obviously knew what was going to happen and still allowed her to participate. It was a role which not every preteen could portray. Shields was extremely mature and played her part very well. I wouldn't say it's pedophilia. There are some who may find pleasure in a twelve- year-old's lady parts, but Bellocq loved her for her innocence. He even asks her to not speak as a whore. It's real. It's what actually happened. It's not what would have happened today, but it is truthful. It was a different time in a different place. For instance, Edgar Allan Poe, one of the greatest American writers in history, married his own cousin. This may be strange today, but back then, it may, repeat may, have been common. In Ancient Egypt, pharaohs married their own sisters before their twentieth birthdays. This made more sense, though: they wanted to keep their bloodline pure, and puberty is the time when the body is ready to conceive and reproduce. Therefore, the teen years were originally meant for marriage. It's not out of pornography that Malle created this film. It's out of truth. It is true. Today, still. The movie showed exactly what all of you who despise this film believe. It took a lot of thought to produce this film. The architecture, the plant life, the community, the underage drinking. From what I've seen and known growing up around the Big Easy, it's all pretty much true. I believe what you dislike is that it actually happened. It's a historical film. It's factual. New Orleans has changed, but there is no escape of the past. The Saints just won the SuperBowl after 43 years of failure. We can't escape the fact that our first playoff game was in 1990, 23 years after the team manifested. We can't escape the fact that Katrina's devastation could have been slimly less grim because those who were too hard-headed to flee stayed and died. We can't escape the fact that we have been the murder capital of the United States. We can escape the fact that we are the murder capital of the United States, but only for the same reason that so many of you are complaining. Times have changed, but those times are forever in history. Times will change again. Fortunately, we weren't too late for the times to change and this movie to never have existed.

This is an exceptional film - not because most of the critics say so, but for me because I cannot think of any other film which left me with a greater feeling of having been temporarily transported to another world in a place and time with which I was totally unfamiliar.Many IMDb users have reviewed and commented on this film and another full review is unnecessary, but bringing out its exceptional nature and encouraging those who have not seen it to do so does require some supplementation. Comments about the nudity in this film not being disturbing come into this category. Today nudity occurs in films for two principal reasons, firstly because it would be natural for the character concerned under the circumstances being depicted by the film, or secondly because it is being used by the director to add a little eye candy intended to increase the visual appeal of the film. In the latter case the viewers personal reaction will govern the response to such eye candy, (typically for example, regardless of whether or not they themselves appreciate it, many viewers feel that this is very inappropriate for younger viewers and all films should provide advance warning when it is present). But where the nudity is an integral part of the story being presented, viewers who wish to see this story should not find it disturbing unless the nude scenes are excessive or gross. Pretty Baby is not such a film, it is one where Louis Malle has minimized his use of nudity - any less and the nature and character of the scenario he has to depict could become distorted. He should be commended on his restraint which may have made it much easier for some viewers to concentrate on the more serious issues raised in the film.When this film was first released the sequence showing the brothel auctioning the virginity of their new girl to the highest bidder raised a lot of eyebrows, and clearly many in the audiences had not appreciated that this practice used to be commonplace. Most viewers found the sequence disturbing, but in Pretty Baby the fact that Violet had been raised to expect this, and was looking forward to it as an important step towards entering adult life, greatly reduced its impact. Another film, French Quarter, which was released the same year as Pretty Baby, was the story of an orphaned girl who had been strictly brought up on a farm, but who had had to take refuge in a city brothel to avoid starvation when her parents died. Those who saw it will remember that it included a similar auction which I for one found much more harrowing to watch as it clearly showed the trauma inflicted on an unprepared and very reluctant young girl, starting of course as she was being stripped and paraded for public exhibition. Any such sequences provide very uncomfortable viewing for most men, who tend to thankfully take refuge in a conviction that they could never occur today.Other scenes showing the exploitation inherent in life as it was lived in Storyville in 1917 were also found to be disturbing by many viewers; and some comments even suggest a widely held conviction that we live in a more moral society today. Before we condemn our forbears we should perhaps examine this conviction in more detail. In Europe and North America we have quite recently moved away from a society where marriages among the upper classes were regarded as primarily intended to enhance social status and generate offspring. Wives frequently did not love their husbands and, although they dutifully provided children, they were often happy for him to exercise his virility with paid companions. Visits to a local brothel, where regular customers could became friendly with all the staff, were condoned or even approved. This often led to a reasonably stable environment for the young women concerned. Today most of us would strongly disapprove of such lifestyles, and would rightly emphasize how far we have progressed by ensuring young people have the opportunity to choose their own lifetime partner; but we still need to be honest about the problems this new lifestyle has created today. There were few Robert Pickton's feeding twenty-six victims to his pigs in Victorian times. Today we frequently encounter police warnings about serial killers; in Victorian times Jack the Ripper was a much more unique character. Too many of today's prostitutes shiver in the rain or snow on street corners throughout long evenings each night, periodically spending an infrequent few uncomfortable minutes in a car - each time at an unknown risk to themself - and are forced afterwards to give almost all their takings to a pimp attached to the local street gang. We need to recognize that many of them would probably regard living in a comfortable and stable brothel, such as that depicted in this film, as akin to heaven on earth.Ultimately this is the powerful message from Pretty Baby that makes it such an exceptional film; but because the Director decided to employ a totally non-judgmental documentary type presentation and to minimise any direct emotional appeal, most viewers probably only recognize it when scenes returned to their memory during the hours and days after they left the cinema, and I do not believe its rare combination of beautiful imagery and haunting power has so far been brought out adequately by the comments on this database.

Set in 1917 New Orleans. This is the story of a brothel and the women working there. One of them, Hattie (Susan Sarandon), has a 12 year old girl named Violet (Brooke Shields). Bellocq (Keith Carradine) pays to photograph the women but doesn't have sex with any of them. However he seems strongly attracted to Violet who is being set up to be a prostitute like her mom.This sounds a lot worse than it plays. It was hugely controversial when it came out mostly because Shields was 12 and has nude scenes. The subject matter alone caused outrage but seriously...this film has no impact. It's extremely low key to a ridiculous degree. Everything is done in such a calm laid-back manner that it doesn't seem even remotely exploitive. Considering the subject matter the film is incredibly tame. The only nudity comes from Sarandon and Shields and it's never sexual in context. The film looks great too and it's (purportedly) factual. The low key tone works--but after a while it gets downright boring. EVERYBODY acts low key. I was just hoping somebody would overreact to something. Also the story gets more than a little unbelievable towards the end. The acting is good by Sarandon and the other women. Frances Faye as the head of the house is great and it's always good to see Barbara Steele. However Shields is terrible--but she WAS only 12. Carradine is even worse. Very stiff and wooden. This isn't a bad movie just a dull one. Hard to believe a movie about a 12 year old prostitute could be dull--but it is. It definitely would not be made today. I give it a 6.