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.

Plot summary [link]

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 an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine-sniffing Madame Nell, has a 12-year-old daughter, Violet, who also 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 only agrees after he offers to pay.

Bellocq becomes a fixture in the brothel, taking many photographs of the prostitutes, mostly of Hattie. His activities fascinate Violet, though she believes he is falling in love with her mother, which makes her jealous. Violet is also a restless child, and frustrated by the long, precise process Bellocq must go through to pose and take his pictures.

Nell decides that Violet is old enough for her virginity to be auctioned off. After a bidding war between regulars, Violet is bought by an apparently quiet customer, but this first sexual experience is unpleasant. Hattie, meanwhile, aspires to escape prostitution. She marries one of her customers and goes to St. Louis without her daughter, whom her husband believes to be her sister. Hattie promises to return for Violet once she’s settled and broken the news to her new spouse.

Violet runs away from the brothel in a fit of temper after being punished for some hijinks, showing up on Belloqc’s doorstep. The two become lovers, although Violet still needs a great deal of attention and is frustrated by Belloqc’s devotion to his work. For his part, the (perhaps asexual) older man is entranced by Violet’s beauty, youth, and photogenic face.

Violet eventually returns to Nell’s after quarrelling with Belloqc, but social reform groups are forcing the brothels of Storyville to close. Bellocq arrives to wed Violet, ostensibly to protect her from the larger world.

Immediately following the wedding,. Hattie and her husband arrive from St. Louis. They claim that Violet’s marriage is illegal without their consent and plan to take her back with them. Violet would like her husband to come with her, but he lets her go, realizing a more conventional life, and schooling, will benefit her more.

Main cast [link]

• Brooke Shields as Violet
• Keith Carradine as Bellocq
• Susan Sarandon as Hattie
• Frances Faye as Nell
• Antonio Fargas as Professor
• Matthew Anton as Red Top
• Diana Scarwid as Frieda
• Barbara Steele as Josephine
• Seret Scott as Flora
• Cheryl Markowitz as Gussie
• Susan Manskey as Fanny
• Laura Zimmerman as Agnes
• Miz Mary as Odette
• Gerrit Graham as Highpockets
• Mae Mercer as Mama Mosebery

Film music [link]

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.

Content and rating [link]

• In addition to the subject of child prostitution, further issues were raised because of scenes involving a nude 12-year-old Brooke Shields.^[1] Because of this, the 109-minute film was edited to 106 minutes in some releases. (The 109-version of the film is available on DVD. However, all existing DVD versions are censored by reframing: zooming forward to show less of the scene than the cinema or VHS versions. This was done whenever Shields was completely nude to avoid showing her pubic area or buttocks.^{[citation needed]} The properly-framed version circulates online, this version is sourced from either TV broadcasts or the Laserdisc. Quality is significantly lower than on the DVD.) Continuing controversy over Shields' nude scenes caused Pretty Baby to be banned in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan. Gossip columnist Rona Barrett called the film "child pornography," and director Louis Malle allegedly was portrayed as a "combination of Lolita's Humbert Humbert and controversial director Roman Polanski"^[1].

• Pretty Baby received an R rating in the U.S., an 18 rating in the U.K., and an R18+ rating in Australia, for nudity and sexual content.

Reception [link]

Box office [link]

Pretty Baby earned $5.8 million in the United States.^[2]

Critical reception [link]

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]

Awards [link]

The film won the Technical Grand Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.^[7]

See also [link]

• My Little Princess

References [link]

External links [link]

• Pretty Baby at the Internet Movie Database
• Pretty Baby at AllRovi
• Pretty Baby at Rotten Tomatoes
• Making of Pretty Baby: Photo Gallery