| Pretty Baby | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Louis Malle |
| Produced by | Louis Malle Polly Platt (associate) |
| Written by | Polly Platt (story) Louis Malle (story) Polly Platt (screenplay) |
| Starring | Brooke Shields Keith Carradine Susan Sarandon |
| Music by | Ferdinand Morton |
| Cinematography | Sven Nykvist |
| Editing by | Suzanne Fenn |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | April 5, 1978 |
| Running time | 109 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $5,786,368 |
Pretty Baby is a 1978 historical fiction drama film directed by Louis Malle. The screenplay was written by Polly Platt. The title is inspired by the Tony Jackson song, "Pretty Baby", which is used in the soundtrack. Although the film was mostly praised by critics, it was quite controversial at the time, especially for its scenes of the nude pre-teen Brooke Shields.
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The film is set in 1917, during the last months of legal prostitution in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana. Hattie, a prostitute working at the elegant brothel run by the elderly Madame Nell, has a 12-year-old daughter Violet, who lives at the house. Hattie has also just given birth to a baby boy. When photographer Ernest J. Bellocq comes by with his camera Hattie and Violet are the only ones awake. He asks to be allowed to take photographs of the women. Madame Nell agrees if he pays. He takes many photographs of several of the prostitutes, but mostly of Hattie. His activities fascinate Violet.
Nell decides that Violet is now old enough for her virginity to be auctioned. At the auction Violet is bought by an apparently quiet customer, but her first experience of sex is unpleasant. Hattie, meanwhile, aspires to escape prostitution. She marries, abandons Violet, and goes to St. Louis. Violet stays in the brothel as a prostitute. Bellocq continues to spend time with Violet, entranced by her beauty, youthful and photogenic face. When the brothel closes, Bellocq and Violet wed, ostensibly to protect her from the larger world. He is much older, however, and others question his motives in marrying her. They live together in his isolated house. Hattie and her husband return. They say that the marriage was illegal without their consent and tell Violet to come away with them. She moves to St. Louis to a life of conventional respectability with her stepfather and little brother, leaving Bellocq behind.
ABC Records released a soundtrack of the film's ragtime score, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Music Score in the "Adaptation Score" category.
Pretty Baby earned $5.8 million in the United States.[2]
The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of 14 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.9 out of 10.[3] While many reviewers praised the film's dreamy evocation of 1917 brothel life — and the performances of Sarandon, Shields, and Carradine — some found the slow pacing and languid acting a dull viewing experience.
Understandably, the issues of prostitution and child pornography were not far from critics' thoughts. In his review, The New York Times' Vincent Canby wrote "... Mr. Malle, the French director ... has made some controversial films in his time but none, I suspect, that is likely to upset convention quite as much as this one — and mostly for the wrong reasons. Though the setting is a whorehouse, and the lens through which we see everything is Violet, who ... herself becomes one of Nell's chief attractions, Pretty Baby is neither about child prostitution nor is it pornographic." Canby ended his review with the claim that Pretty Baby is "... the most imaginative, most intelligent, and most original film of the year to date.."[4]
Similarly, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert discussed how "... Pretty Baby has been attacked in some quarters as child porn. It's not. It's an evocation of a time and a place and a sad chapter of Americana."[5] He also praised Shields' performance, writing that she "... really creates a character here; her subtlety and depth are astonishing."[5]
On the other hand, Variety's wrote that "the film is handsome, the players nearly all effective, but the story highlights are confined within a narrow range of ho-hum dramatization."[6] And Asheville, North Carolina, Mountain Xpress critic Ken Hanke, looking at the film from the perspective of 2003, said of Pretty Baby: "It was once shocking and dull. Now it's just dull."[3]
The film won the Technical Grand Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.[7]
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