David and I have spent a good deal of time on the show talking about the difference between documentaries that proceed with an intended course of action versus those that leave themselves open to the process of discovery. We’ve also made no bones about our overwhelming preference for the latter. It’s a preference, for me anyway, of revelation versus information, and of discovery versus certainty. Cinema is an art specifically defined by process, by the ways in which spontaneous inspiration and divine providence can redefine the result. Most other forms of art reach their zenith through refinement; cinema, arguably, reaches it by letting go of control.
Martha Coolidge’s 1976 debut feature Not a Pretty Picture is an act of letting go, or seeing if she can create the circumstances to do so. The film is a combination of an autobiographical portrait of herself, at age sixteen, when she was raped while attending boarding school. It is also a documentary about the making of that autobiographical film. In the latter, Martha is played by Michele Maneti, a young woman who was also raped in high school. This very premise – introduced on a title card a few minutes into the film – exposes the regularity of this crime in a way that just wasn’t being discussed in cinema. Sex itself was still new to screens, following the demise of the Hayes Code less than ten years prior, and prior allusions to sexual violence in films like Touch of Evil, Man of the West, or Anatomy of a Murder treated it as something of an aberration, often at the hands of either faceless or anonymously intimidating villains, and rarely take on the perspective of the victim, if at all. Often the woman’s suffering is more communicated through a man’s. The few films attempt to reckon with the trauma, and acknowledge how horrifically common it is – Jack Garfein’s Something Wild or Ida Lupino’s Outrage come to mind – were small releases, little-seen until decades later.
So it was an extraordinarily brave move for Coolidge to make a film like this, to put her name out there, publicly, as a survivor of sexual violence, and to give Maneti the space to make the same declaration. The resulting work is free of any easy release. It’s a constant working-through of personal and social traumas that had to that point gradually constructed the bedrock of society. People are allowed to say things they don’t quite mean, or have fully processed, or which are even outright cruel. Jim Carrington, who in the fiction film plays Martha’s rapist, is a conflicted figure, whose very detailed accounts of how other guys he knew treat women feel all too close to home. His confession that he could feel his character’s frustration to the point that he actually wanted to hit Maneti is at once the film’s most shocking and most natural turn. Whatever we think of Carrington, his propensity for violence didn’t seem immediately evident, but much of the film’s exploration centered around how such behavior has to be expected.
Coolidge and Maneti’s shock at that moment is evident, and reflects ours. The prior scenes had shown him (as Curly) desperately and forcefully working Maneti (as Martha) towards intercourse, whatever it took. They’d gone through rounds where he was more verbally insistent, and some where he was more physically insistent, and either some element of Curly found its way through Jim, or some element of Jim came through in Curly. The film isn’t interested in interrogating past that point, and neither is Coolidge in the interview included with this disc. But the divide stands out nonetheless.
So, too, does Coolidge’s eventual surrender in filming the rape scene. In a sense, this is the moment her whole project had been building to. But when the moment comes, she can’t fully face it, cutting it short and making no effort to construct another take for it. It’s beyond understandable; it’s tough to take for a viewer removed from that direct experience and nearly fifty years from the film’s release. One can’t help but marvel at Coolidge’s determination to reach this point, and empathize with the pain of seeing it all played out. Art is often about working through one’s life experience, of sharing it, of seeing it reflected to others; in a sense, this effort is that process in real time, seeing how that vulnerability bounces off of Maneti, Carrington, the unnamed crew members floating in the background, the rest of the cast, and back onto Coolidge herself. She gives the film, and herself, the grace to let those impressions hold in the air as the film reaches its final moments, nearing her grasp, nearing our clarity, before blowing them away in one firm breath that takes us to the credits.
Not a Pretty Picture has not, as far as I can tell, even been released on home video prior to Criterion’s new Blu-ray release, which is staggering to believe. Nevertheless, the new release is an excellent showcase for the film. The video is sourced from a 4K restoration supervised and approved by Coolidge, working from the 16mm negative and a 16mm interpositive, undertaken by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. With an understanding and appreciation for the film’s production limitations, the transfer is immaculate. It varies, naturally, a bit when comparing the documentary footage with the narrative sections; the latter is much more carefully-lit and staged, while the documentary has to work on the fly with how the subjects move, and is often handheld. As with many such productions, the black levels can be a little charcoal-gray, but it’s helpful for the film’s night scenes to pick up every detail available in the shadows. Colors are not particularly vibrant but have strong integrity to their source.
Audio, too, is crisp and clear; you’d never guess the age of the film listening to it.
Supplements are limited, just a conversation between Coolidge and filmmaker Allison Anders. I really love these recent conversations on Criterion’s releases of films directed by women (Dogfight being another), that pair them in conversation with other notable female filmmakers. There’s such an immediate rapport and mutual admiration at play that draws out more candid and enthusiastic responses than an ordinary interview might provide. Anders’ own perspective as a survivor who also made a film (Things Behind the Sun) based on her experience is obviously pertinent, the difficulty not only in facing that experience but in communicating it with a cast and crew, and each of them has worked all up and down the industry ladder, lending to an easy familiarity with film history and this film’s place in it.
The only other on-disc supplement is Coolidge’s 49-minute documentary Old-Fashioned Woman, a portrait of her grandmother that she made only a couple years prior to Not a Pretty Picture. It’s a very warm, sweet film that captures very well the vast disparity between the turn-of-the-century era her grandmother knew and the world as it existed in the early 1970s. Mabel is sharp, very funny, and thrilled to have the conversation with Martha. The film, too, is presented from a new restoration, and looks fantastic.
Finally, there’s an essay by film critic Molly Haskell that unpacks the film beat-by-beat in a concise, approachable way, and as I often feel with Haskell’s writing, is immediately engaging to read.
There’s always a lot of concern floating around – and when I say “always,” I really mean it’s existed constantly in the twenty-plus years I’ve followed their releases – that Criterion only puts out lavish editions of already-beloved films that have had prior releases, but here you guys go, here’s an important, landmark film getting its home video debut in an excellent new restoration and transfer. Step up.
