Martha Coolidge's NOT A PRETTY PICTURE (1976)

 

"He already stole my life force... I felt like the Living Dead, that I was... dying was not going to be worth anything. I felt like I was shit, place is shit, that's all."

A film that interrogates through what art always is - process - and what place there is for recreating trauma on screen. What do actors say all the time: they are "playing" a character when they are in a film. Sometimes that can run up into seeming so raw and real (think Cassavetes or even in a genre film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something). 

Not a Pretty Picture has as its rigorous thesis that there has to be serious thought into depicting such traumatic acts on screen (I have to wonder if somewhere on Coolidge's mind was just how much in the 1970s in cinema rape was used as a simple dramatic device, often very cheaply so, and continued for many years after) and when an actor is playing something that really happened, and moreover herr one of the actors, specifically the one playing the victim, was a victim herself of a rape, what ends up as "play" is so shocking not because of the brutality but because there is no line anymore to separate us.

Of course when looking beyond the lines as it were a film like this exists because (and this is also addressed by the male actor James Carrington to an extent) men take what they want and women both get blamed for their acts as it goes around - the "Whore" written on Martha's locker is an extra punch in the gut - and the idea of someone being charged much less convicted of a crime, and lest we forget this is a *criminal act* that happened, was and still is largely not considered. And this goes without saying everything that Martha (real Martha) mentions about her therapy and mental and emotional reckoning with herself.

Carrington mentions in one of the interviews that he sees Curly as "uneducated" as his biggest problem and that he sees this film as an educational effort. What is even more important is how much the actress Manenti talks on how she internalized the shame brought on from others with the experience.  Where could she turn to?  Or Martha?  Or any woman? 

This happened and happens every day throughout the world. Coolidge reveals that art and dialog - and it should be mentioned that these actors are not amateurs but are professional people who speak intelligently and empathetically about what is happening on the set - can be if not some kind of... is it a form of therapy? 

We don't see what the writing process was like, but the production process and rehearsing with actors is enough for the purpose of the film. It is so special because it shows what it means to make a film about this. There could be even a danger of like navel gazing, like looking so much at things that Coolidge loses the thread. On the contrary, this is so alive and charged because you don't know how things will go despite knowing the *what* since it is laid out at the beginning.

This still strikes me 50 years later as one of the most courageous films of its or any kind.  One wishes that this had been available more for viewing over the years as I can see the way it was presented in this hybrid way could have been helpful for young people in particular (did this get screened in schools?  It should be - especially because Coolidge shows real moments of camaraderie between women like Martha and her roommate friend in dramatic scenes).  

There is a frankness to the interviews that is there in the drama and you can tell everyone believes in Coolidge and the material (keep in mind she had never made a feature before by the way).  There is still so much to think about here that I don't know if I scratched the surface with this post.