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Pretty Baby

Catalog Number
8940
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Pretty Baby (1978)

Additional Information

Additional Information
1917. The red-light district of New Orleans. The story of the women. The photographer. And the prostitute's daughter.


After making a series of acclaimed and controversial films in his native France, director Louis Malle made his American debut with this disturbing but visually beautiful story about Hattie (Susan Sarandon), a prostitute working in New Orleans' Storyville district at the turn of the century. When Hattie becomes pregnant, she opts to keep her baby and gives birth to a daughter named Violet, raising her in the brothel where she continues to work. Twelve years later, Violet (Brooke Shields) is old enough to attract the attentions of the brothel's customers, but emotionally has one foot in the adult world of her surroundings and the other in the naïveté of childhood. With Hattie's consent, Violet's virginity is auctioned off to the customers of the house; but for Violet, the pull between childhood and adulthood becomes most clear -- and most painful -- when she draws the affections of Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a photographer who has been working on a photo series about Storyville prostitutes. Violet's blend of childlike innocence and adult sensuality is profoundly attractive to him, but their relationship quickly becomes problematic, especially when Hattie leaves Violet behind to get married.


Pretty Baby is a 1978 American historical fiction and drama film directed by Louis Malle, and starring Brooke Shields, Keith Carradine, and Susan Sarandon. The screenplay for the film was written by Polly Platt. Its plot focuses on a 12-year-old prostitute in the red light district of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century.
The title of the film is inspired by the Tony Jackson song, "Pretty Baby", which is also used in the soundtrack. Although the film was mostly praised by critics, it was wildly controversial at the time due to its depiction of child prostitution and the scenes of the nude Brooke Shields, who was 12 years old at the time of filming.


The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of 14 critics had 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."


Release Date: April 5, 1978 @ The Coronet


Distrib: Paramount


Boxoffice: $5,786,368 2013: $20,178,100

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